The Theory and Practice of Women's Self-Knowledge

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KNOWLEDGE IN WAVES: THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF WOMEN’S

SELF-KNOWLEDGE AND SELF-UNDERSTANDING OF THEIR BODIES

Stephanie Bethune

Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the Degree of

Bachelor of Arts with

Honours in Sociology

Acadia University

April, 2015

This thesis by Stephanie Bethune

is accepted in its present form by the

Department of Sociology

as satisfying the thesis requirements for the degree of

Bachelor of Arts with Honours

Approved by the Thesis Supervisor

______

(Dr. Zelda Abramson) Date

Approved by the Head of the Department

______

(Dr. Jeff Hennessy) Date

Approved by the Honours Committee

______

(Dr. Anthony Thomson) Date

I, Stephanie Bethune, grant permission to the University Librarian at Acadia

University to reproduce, loan or distribute copies of my thesis in microform, paper or electronic formats on a non-profit basis. I, however, retain the copyright in my thesis.

______

Signature of Author

______

Date

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Acknowledgements

This thesis is dedicated to my supervisor and mentor, Dr. Zelda Abramson.

Thank you for pushing me to be my best self, and believing in me when I didn’t believe in myself.

Special thanks go to the faculty, staff, and students in the departments of

Sociology, Philosophy, and Politics, for providing incredible spaces of learning and support. Our conversations in classrooms, offices, hallways, living rooms, and coffee shops created an environment of continuous discovery and collaborative inquiry.

Finally, I would like to extend my thanks to the four women who participated in my research for this thesis. Your openness and insights astounded and inspired me.

Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... IV

LIST OF TABLES ...... VII

ABSTRACT ...... VIII

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 4

CHAPTER 3: METHODS AND METHODOLOGY ...... 23

METHODOLOGY ...... 23

METHODS ...... 26

The Sample ...... 26

Data Analysis ...... 28

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ...... 29

CONCEPTS ...... 29

Contemporary Condition ...... 29

Progress ...... 31

Ideal ...... 32

SEXUALITY ...... 33

Subjectivity of Women’s Experiences ...... 34

Seizing the Means to Reproduction ...... 35

Elimination of Sexual Difference ...... 36

Sexuality as Constructed ...... 37

Fear and Shame in Masturbating ...... 39

BODIES ...... 40

Deconstruction of Notions of Womanhood ...... 40

The Ideal Woman ...... 42

Body Image ...... 43

Subordination of Body to Mind ...... 45

Community Building through Confession ...... 46

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION ...... 49

REFERENCES ...... 51

List of Tables

TABLE 1: SAMPLE DESCRIPTION ...... 27

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Abstract

Contemporary feminist theory has become so complex and academic that the connection to women’s lives is seemingly lost, raising the question of whether feminist theory has a substantive relationship to women’s daily lives and experiences. Through problematizing the spaces between theory and experience, drawing on four in-depth mutigenerational interviews and examining the apparent relations between theory and experience, the futures of feminist theory can be creatively reimagined. By broadly overviewing important themes in feminist theory from late second wave to present day and cross- examining these with interview data from four multigenerational interviews, I examine the aforementioned space. Women’s experiences of their sexualities and bodies relate to theory in unexpected and interesting ways, and theory reflects these experiences in both its inaccessible and accessible forms. Women experience the construction of womanhood, the shame surrounding sexuality, community building through confession, and seek out their ideal world. By examining these experiences in relation to feminist theory, I demonstrate the importance of further theoretical analyses of sexual and gendered difference, wherein the creation and dissemination of knowledge of women’s bodies and experiences affect the lives of the women that it studies.

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CHAPTER 1: Introduction

This thesis was inspired by my love of both feminist theory and my experiences within a feminist community. As I realized my two passions were often conceived as disparate, I sought to place my inquiry in the spaces between theory and experience, with the goal of bringing the two together.

This thesis will problematize the spaces between theory and experience, and examine the apparent relations between them in praxis. By broadly overviewing important themes in feminist theory from late second wave to current day and cross- examining these with interview data from four multigenerational interviews, the aforementioned space is examined. Through this process the futures of feminist theory can be creatively reimagined. Women’s experiences of their sexualities and bodies relate to theory in unexpected and interesting ways, and theory reflects these experiences in both inaccessible and accessible forms. The women that participated in this project experience the construction of womanhood, the shame surrounding sexuality, community building through confession, and seek out their ideal world.

By examining these experiences in relation to feminist theory, I demonstrate the need for further theoretical analyses of sexual and gendered difference. This need is evident, as the theoretical work being done on women’s bodies and experiences has an effect on the women whose bodies and experiences are being studied.

Through a series of multigenerational, in-depth interviews with women between the ages of 19 and 82, I focus on transference of knowledge, specifically addressing the ways in which these women learned about their bodies and sexualities, through family, friends, and school. By theorizing their experience in relation to second- and third-wave feminist theories, I argue that second- and third-wave feminist theories significantly contributed to the progressive change that women have made, through changes such as the ways women understand their bodies during and after second- and third-wave feminism. This contribution of second- and third-wave feminist theory is not only experienced in the macro social sense, however, but also in the micro interactions and experiences of women in their daily lives.

In addition to the examination of second- and third-wave feminist theory, I probe both the historical context of women’s experiences of learning in chapter two, as well as the effects that the different waves have had on individual women's experiences. The multigenerational nature of my sample will allow me to trace the intersection of time and space, in my analysis of the relation between women’s experiences and theoretical feminism.

Following my examination of the theoretical literature in chapter two, I will explicate my research methodology and methods in chapter three, as well as introduce my sample. In chapter four I will use the methodology and methods introduced in chapter three to integrate and cross-examine the theoretical literature overviewed in chapter two with the interview data collected and analyzed. Finally, in chapter five I

will conclude my research with a proposal for further research, taking this thesis as a starting-point for continued analysis.

CHAPTER 2: Theoretical Literature Review

On discovers, in examining the topic of women’s knowledge of their bodies and sexualities, a wealth of academic work surrounding women’s bodies, sexualities, and knowledge itself, both epistemologically and ontologically. The ways that women gain and have knowledge of their bodies and sexualities, and how this knowledge relates to developments in feminist theory, however, are largely unexplored topics. Through this thesis I will investigate the experiences of women as knowledge-holders of their own embodiment and sexuality, and integrate these experiences with the theoretical developments within feminist theory on the body.

This literature review is not approached with a strict logical succession. Although the chapter is structured in a roughly chronological mode, chronology is not the goal and as such is not achieved. Although the texts for this literature review were read thematically and chronologically, neither strict method of organization yielded the flow of ideas through which I understood the body of work. As such, the texts are organized neither strictly thematically nor strictly chronologically, but through a creative and productive mix of the two.

To truly problematize binarized, hierarchical, temporal and linear approaches to feminist theory and politic, I made this project explorative and experiential. In order to examine the spaces between feminist theory and women’s experiences, I need to approach a review of literature on the body with a willingness to reimagine what

feminist theory is and can be. I begin with a brief overview of central concepts to this project and then explore a selection of the rich and diverse corpus of writing on women’s bodies and sexualities, beginning with the mid-second wave theoretical perspectives and working roughly chronologically to current day. This overview will allow me to sketch broadly the development of theoretical perspectives on women’s bodies and sexualities (Firestone 1970; Irigaray 1997; Grosz 1999). I will then compare the lived experiences of women to the development of feminist theories of the body in order to map out the relationship between feminist theory and women’s lived experiences, which seem to be largely unexamined in the literature. The mapping of this relationship is the goal of this thesis. I will begin by investigating concepts such as the contemporary condition (Routledge 1998), progress and substantive change (Mignolo 2011), the ideal human condition (Firestone 1970;

Rubin 1998), knowledge (Sprague and Kobrynowicz 2006), and gender and sex equity (Butler 2014; Chernik 2001). Through an analytical understanding of how I will employ these concepts, this thesis can begin to utilize women’s knowledge of their bodies and sexualities as indicators of the multiplicity of enigmatic feminist ideals.

The grouping of feminist theory and practice into chronological waves poses many problems, such as imposing a chronological and hierarchical structure as well homogenizing diverse theories and activisms. However, for the purpose of this project the rough chronological and thematic sketch provided by the second- and third-wave structure provides a useful temporal framework through which to analyze

the different stages of feminist theory and activism during which various women were living and learning. Further, due to the constraints of this project, I will not be fully integrating activist texts into my discussion of feminist theory works. This is not to prescribe a lesser status onto activist texts, but rather to more succinctly focus on the research question of how theoretical texts impact women’s realities.

The contemporary human condition can be understood simply as the current state of humankind, or how the world is right now. This concept is vital to the project at hand as without an understanding of how things currently are, it is not possible to analyze what needs to change. “Progress” is often conceived of as a problematic enlightenment era construct, and one that contains the potentials within it for defenses of colonial modernity and salvation (Mignolo 2011). However, progress stands logically as a concept for discussion of substantive social change. Any attack on the concept of progress in and of itself is logically invalid, as refuting progress contains a value claim that society would be better off not employing the concept of progress, necessarily implying that rejecting progress would constitute progress towards an ideal. This progress, from the contemporary condition to an ideal, is an item of contention within feminist theoretical texts, even within texts of the same school.

Due to the diversity of experiences of women, a single ideal cannot be dictated while respecting the subjectivities of women’s experiences. The Boston Women’s Health

Collective challenged the aforementioned problem of the hegemonic ideal (a single, dominant ideal) through their work in women’s health, by publishing their women’s health text, Our Bodies, Ourselves (The Boston Women’s Health Book Collective

1971). This text challenged the dominant medical discourse of women’s bodies wherein bodies could be universalized and treated in a standardized form. Through the theoretical background of the text, as well as the practice of promoting women’s self-health care, the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective demonstrates how the hegemonic ideal can be problematized and avoided in feminist theory and practice.

Within feminist theoretical texts there is a diverse range of ideals towards which the feminist agenda should be aiming. These ideals are largely divided between radical and liberal feminism, arguing for essentialism and androgyny, respectively (Nicholson 1997b). Although this binary understanding of feminist theory is neither necessary nor exhaustive of all theoretical positions, and although it fails to reflect the multiplicity of contemporary feminisms, this distinction will be used. The utility of the aforementioned distinction allows for an understanding of some of the broad themes and divisions within feminist theory. Androgyny posits that men and women are basically the same, and the differences they experience are entirely manifested in the social sphere (Nicholson 1997b). Contrastingly, essentialism “[elaborates] the meaning of differences between women and men in terms of the unique situations and characteristics of women” (Nicholson 1997b:3), focusing on the essential characteristics of women. This framework of essentialism was used by Nancy Chodorow (1997) in her work examining the place of women in

Freudian theories of the family. Through this analysis of the psychology of women,

Chodorow brought essentialism from the commonly negative or victimized portrayals of women to positive descriptions of women. This ideology of essentialism will be

discussed later in the chapter. As discussed above, the distinction within feminist theory between essentialist theories and androgyny theories is occasionally reductive and not exhaustive; however, for the purposes of framing a large body of diverse literature within this chapter these distinctions will be used.

When discussing concepts such as the contemporary condition and progress, epistemology, the theory of knowledge, is employed. Epistemology is the study of the sufficient and necessary conditions for knowledge, its structure, and its sources and limits (Routledge 1998:362). As this thesis presents a discussion of women’s knowledge, the ways that we can have knowledge and where knowledge comes from are central. The dominant mode of thought in epistemology affirms the existence of an objective view of the world. Feminist standpoint epistemology, in contrast, affirms the existence of a situated knower, and therefore situated knowledge

(Routledge 1998:597). That is, knowledge reflects the particular perspectives of the subject. This theory of situated knowledge allows historically undervalued or unheard voices to assert their expertise in their own situated knowledge and experiences (Smith 1989). From this school of thought, feminist standpoint theory, which will be discussed in chapter two, is created.

In order to understand the position of this literature review within feminist theory literature at large, it is necessary to examine the historical context of this overview. Feminism beginning in the early 1960s and moving into the mid 1990s is commonly termed second-wave feminism, although the time span is contested, as well as the grouping of feminism into waves. Early second-wave feminism was a

movement comprised of primarily professional women, seeking legal and institutional rights for women, specifically focusing on allowing women access to the paid work force (1997b:1–2). Following the widespread and rights-based women’s movement of the early second wave (Simon 1991), late second-wave feminism—the women’s liberation movement—was fractured by the controversial nature of its analysis, methods, and goals (Nicholson 1997b). The late second wave of feminism focused primarily on issues of sexuality and reproductive rights. Within Canada, gains made by this movement included the creation of the Battered Women’s Shelter Movement, the Royal Commission on the Status of Women, and the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, and more generally, the protection of women’s reproductive rights within the women’s choice movement, such as the Abortion Caravan organized by the Women’s Caucus. Due in part to the massive emergence of technologies with the capacities to alter reproduction, the women’s health movement developed in response to the increasingly scientific claim over reproduction (Murphy 2012). The women’s health movement focused largely on women regaining knowledge of their bodies; however, the explicit goals of this movement varied widely across practices, as did the methods used. This resulted in an explosion of diverse and varying theories, and as such linear mapping of the development of second wave feminism is not possible in a logical fashion.

Many of the diverse analyses of the second wave were borrowed from Marxist theory—specifically his method of dialectical materialism as an analytical method

(1867). As Marx traced the origins of class inequity to the nature of a capitalist

economy, Firestone (1970), Rubin (1998), and Hartsock (1997), among others, traced the origins of sexism in the biological family—the basic reproductive unit. In this analysis, the fact that women and men were not equal was seen as originating in human reproduction—the ability of women to reproduce. In order to eliminate sexism, according to this viewpoint, women needed to “seize the means to reproduction” through technologies such as birth control and extra-uterine reproduction (Firestone

1970). The goals of the women’s liberation movement were largely to explain the origins of gender inequity as well as the diverse manifestations of women’s oppression (Ryan 1992).

Moving beyond late second-wave activism and theory, the third wave emerged. Although heated debates on whether or not the third wave existed (or is still existing) run amok, including assertions that technology has ushered in a fourth wave,

I approach this movement in theory and activism with the title of the third wave, primarily for clarity. In Gloria Steinem’s foreword to the third-wave anthology, To

Be Real, she addresses this movement from second-wave into third-wave feminism as largely a response to the highly regulated and prevalent definitions of the “’right’ way to be a feminist” (Steinem 1995:xvii). As a result, third-wave feminism is marked by its project to broaden understandings of what feminism is and can be.

Throughout the second and third waves of feminist theory and politic, academics and activists such as Shulamith Firestone (1970), Gayle Rubin (1998),

Hélèn Cixous (2007), and Catharine MacKinnon (1997), broke the relative historical silence on the topics of the subjectivity of women’s experiences, masturbation, and

rape, promoting substantive feminist progress towards the ideal human condition. The

Combahee River Collective did this in second-wave discourse through their call for intersectionality, respecting the subjectivity of women’s experiences as racialized as well as gendered (1980). Within third-wave discussions, Rebecca Walker’s call for women to discuss their experiences with pornography and sadomasochism similarly broke historical silence and opened up new spaces of discussion for women (1995).

This progress, however, hardly constitutes substantive change towards an ideal unless we can see its effects on women’s lives, in particular for this project, and on the ways in which women learn and know about their bodies and sexualities.

Reviewing literature on the body does not construct a frame of reference through which to understand the later discussed theorists, or the theorists that followed chronologically (Grosz 1999; Walker 2007). Rather, this method of creative re-examination of identities and understandings constitutes my approach to this body of literature. Through problematizing definitions and examining origins, I suggest that feminist theory has allowed us, and continues to allow us, to reconfigure not only the way we see the world, but the way the world is.

Shulamith Firestone, a founding member of the New York Radical Women and the Redstockings, wrote her only published book in 1970, The Dialectic of Sex.

Although Firestone failed to fully develop the ideas in her book, many of the concepts she introduced are still being discussed in contemporary feminist theories (Nicholson

1997a). Within Firestone’s theory, women must seize the means of reproduction and eliminate sex difference, an injunction analogous to Marx’s charge of the proletariat

to seize the means of production and eliminate class difference (1970). The relation of class inequality to sex inequality is not a concept that Firestone leaves unexplained; however, she posits that the social revolution would manifest as an aftermath or effect of the sexual revolution. Firestone’s writings focus on women’s oppression as originating in the physiological differences between men and women, reflecting one side of a previously presented dichotomy that frequently manifests in discussions of feminist theory—that of androgyny/essentialism. Firestone takes the position of essentialism—that women and men are naturally fundamentally different from one another. The position of essentialism allows Firestone’s theories to affirm the differences between men and women as their most fundamental and essential character, and to call for the dismantling of these essential characteristics through the development of new technologies, such as extra-uterine reproduction.

In 1970, the activist group the Radicalesbians (1997) released a ten-paragraph manifesto entitled The Woman Identified Woman. The essay explored the notion of womanhood through the lens of lesbianism. In turning the second wave mantra of

“the personal is political” towards sexuality, the Radicalesbians revealed sexuality as a category created by “rigid sex roles” (Radicalesbians 1997:154), with the category of lesbianism as an othering label. This manifesto, in its examination of womanhood, revealed the problems faced in trying to understand what womanhood really refers.

In a reductio ad absurdum move (the technique of reducing an argument until it becomes absurd), the Radicalesbians take the common charge of lesbians not being real women and inspect the necessary premises to that conclusion—finding that “the

essence of being a ‘woman’ is to get fucked by men” (Radicalesbians 1997:154).

Despite the absurdity of this reduction, The Woman Identified Woman illustrates the necessity of revealing the origins of gender and sex difference, to avoid such ridiculous and oppressive restrictions to sexual and gender identity, as well as identity more broadly. This conclusion challenges essentialism, exposing the strange consequences of the view of essentialism and argues for a position of androgyny.

Gayle Rubin (1998) similarly explores many of the dangerous effects inherent in adopting the essentialism position, most notably the homogenization of women and their experiences, the logical necessity of extermination or character modification of men, and the repression of sexual expression. The homogenization of women and their experiences is a problem that contemporary feminist theory is not alien to, as charges of feminism as exclusionary led to the general movement in late second wave and early third wave from essentialism to androgyny. Gayle Rubin brings up the logical necessity of character modification of men in a reductio similar to that of the

Radicalesbians. Rubin articulates that if men and women are essential characters, the sexually violent nature of men is unavoidable except through a genocide of the gender or a brainwashing of sorts to modify the character. Far from actually suggesting either of her proposed solutions, Rubin is illustrating how even strict essentialists do not wish to reduce our social selves to our biological selves. That is to say, even theorists who argue for essentialism disagree with the necessary consequences of essentialism. There are still possible ways to suspend and dislodge the prescriptiveness and behavioural reductionism of essentialism.

French feminist Hélèn Cixous (2007) works within the essentialist framework encouraging women to write—to claim their right to tell stories and have them be read. Cixous does not escape the issues within essentialism, but shifts her focus from the common essentialist discussions of the origins of gender and sexual difference to a prescriptive discussion of how to empower women. Cixous compares the fear and shame surrounding writing to that of masturbating, in its secretive and shameful manifestation when acted out by women. The gendered masculine acts of writing and pursuing sexual pleasure are therefore undeserved endeavors for the feminine. These acts of writing, Cixous claims, are a method through which to reclaim the female body to assert ownership and control over that which is, by virtue of its essence, controlled and owned by another.

These primarily radical theorists, illustrating essentialism as the foundation for radical theory, however, paint an unfinished portrait. Radicalism is commonly rooted in androgyny. Catharine A. MacKinnon (1997) rejects the notion of essentialism as a misunderstanding of the true origins of gender. For MacKinnon, masculine sexual desire produces sexuality, which then constructs woman. Said differently, sexual difference (and, as a result, gender difference) is a function of sexual dominance.

MacKinnon takes her theory further, examining rationality for sexual violence in the attribution of both the cause of man’s initiative and the denial of his satisfaction to woman, stating that “to be rapable, a position that is social not biological, defines what a woman is” (1997:49). That is to say, the attribution of women as causing desire in men, as well as denying them that pleasure, is the rationality for sexual

violence, and being a potential subject for that sexual violence is what defines womanhood.

Also within the androgyny paradigm, Monique Wittig (1981) attacks essentialism through citing the example of a lesbian society, within which women complete all the traditionally gendered masculine and feminine social roles in her essay “One is Not Born a Woman.” Wittig adopts a material feminist approach to her work, and cites her goal as the destruction of woman in the favor of women. For

Wittig, the notion of womanhood needs to be not only deconstructed but also destroyed. Within the social construct of gender, women as a category are materially disenfranchised. As such, in order to liberate women from the material confines of womanhood the notion of woman needs to be destroyed.

Within the rich school of French feminist philosophers, a school marked by prominent theorists such as Simone de Beauvoir (1949) and the aforementioned

Hélèn Cixous (2007), Luce Irigaray (1997) turned away from the emerging trend of androgyny towards an older, essentialist framework, but to a different end than most of her essentialist predecessors. Irigaray (1997) employed strategic essentialism in a technique known as mimesis (to imitate) in order to question the view of essentialism itself. This essay explores the autoeroticism of the necessarily constant touching of labial contact, and the violence of separating the two-ness of woman (labia) in penetrative intercourse. Her exploration of the symbolism of sexed genitals examines the multiplicity and subjectivity of women’s bodies, pleasures, and identities, such that woman cannot be One. This yields the multiplicity of meaning in Irigary’s The

Sex Which Is Not One (1997), the necessary two-ness of a woman’s labia, the multiplicity of women’s experiences, and the binary positioning of man as One and woman as Other. Irigaray’s focus on sexed genitals lends her to be highly relevant in discussions of women’s experiences of their own bodies and genitals. Although

Irigaray is a feminist philosopher, her work is not so theoretically based as to be alien to the subjects of her analysis. By bringing theory not just to women’s bodies, but rather beginning, centralizing, and ending her theoretical work with the sexed genitals,

Irigaray performs feminist theory in a fascinating and integrative way.

Simultaneously, while a rich body of feminist theory within the essentialism paradigm was being constructed, many feminist theorists were adopting the counter- standpoint—that of androgyny. I will address now, however, a standpoint that sought to exist between the incompatible approaches of essentialism and androgyny. Susan

Bordo, in her The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity (1997), attempts to bring essentialist ideas and androgyny together. Bordo utilizes Foucault’s (1995) concept of the docile body to explain the cultural institutionalization of policing, and self- policing, of women’s bodies. Bordo adopts Foucault’s conceptualization of power as a matrix rather than centralized in direct hierarchies, and calls for a discourse around the female body within the contemporary contextual aesthetic ideal of women’s space as minimal. This leads into Bordo’s analysis of the political meanings of hysteria, agoraphobia, and anorexia as direct, individual responses to the cultural construction of an ideology of femininity. The act of living in a world that dictates women as ideal only when minimized problematizes the mental stability of women, resulting in their

acts of asceticism performed in hysteria, agoraphobia, and anorexia. Similar to

Irigaray’s (1997) focus on sexed genitals in her theoretical work, Bordo’s examination of common struggles women face allows her theory to exist not merely within the academy, but further, in the experiences of women. Bordo responds to these issues with a call for women and men to examine their individual part in the

(re)production of an oppressive social order—to illuminate the matrix of power and their work in it.

Abra Fortune Chernick (2001) takes up Bordo’s (1997) call for placing the individual in the political through her work The Body Politic, exploring her personal experiences with self-policing her body through anorexia, and demands a primacy of body love and acceptance in the feminist political agenda. This ties in heavily to

Bordo’s discussion of minimizing the space of gendered feminine individuals through body policing. This work also illustrates a trend of subverting the patriarchal and white dominated academic institution by exploring and performing feminist theory through activist texts and personal stories. By approaching issues in feminist theory through anecdotal and experiential evidence, these activists are re-opening the doors of feminism to the women who need feminism.

From the third-wave feminist activism and theory, the notion of a contemporary state of post-feminism emerged. This standpoint was highly critical of theories that portrayed women as victims without control over their lives. As a result, post-feminism is hesitant to condemn central problems for previous feminism, such as pornography and date-rape (Gamble 2000).

Rebecca Walker, in Becoming the 3rd Wave, adopts this argument for personal accounts as a rebuttal to post-feminist ideology—arguing that in order to combat the growing “misconception of equality between the sexes” (Walker 2007:398), feminists need to maintain the third-wave struggles rather than shifting into a post-feminist paradigm. They can do this through sharing personal accounts of sexism to unify and give momentum to the feminist agenda. In Rebecca Walker’s anthology entitled To

Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism (1995), through a series of personal essays written by young women, she works toward “[shaping] a political force more concerned with mandating and cultivating freedom than with policing morality” (Walker 1995:xxxv). In realizing this goal, Walker’s collection of essays explores the issues facing not only feminist theory, but women who live their daily lives as feminists. Dent (1995) discusses her experience of finding feminism not through a single transformative or transcendental moment, but rather through doing feminism without saying it. Dent asks, “what is it that feminists are doing that gets labeled Feminism?” (1995:63), consciously contrasting feminism with Feminism, and problematizing the authority associated with Feminism. Dent, in considering what her experience of and idea for feminism is, arrives at the conclusion that feminism is concerned with confessions. Not exchanging information or broadening the access women have to information, but community-building through confession.

Confession, for Dent, is open and honest sharing of personal experiences. In this,

Dent both asks and answers the questions, who is left out of Feminism and why? By deconstructing the phenomenon she labels the “religion” of Feminism, Dent opens up

the doors of feminist activism to all men and women. Far from merely critiquing the academic feminist theory, Dent is criticizing the way we do feminism in our personal lives and in our conversations. Theorist bell hooks (2000) introduced the concept of

“lifestyle feminism” in contrast to academic feminism. hooks introduces her concept of “lifestyle feminism”, explicating how to do feminism in our personal lives, in the example of abortion: “If feminism is a movement to end sexist oppression, and depriving females of reproductive rights is a form of sexist oppression, then one cannot be anti-choice and be feminist” (2000:6). In this example, hooks demonstrates what Dent alludes to in her work—the way to not just believe in feminism, but to live it.

Jocelyn Taylor (1995) also writes within Walker’s anthology on her experience of being a black radical feminist lesbian. As a radical activist, Taylor supported herself financially through stripping. In this dissonance between her work and her personal politics, she discusses in a deeply personal and powerful way the problems of eroticization of women of colour, the capitalist exploitation of women’s bodies, and the sexual violence women so regularly face. She explains this dissonance through the structure of the capitalist world—as a radical politically active woman, she did not have the lifestyle to support a traditional job, but could not subsist without a regular income. As a result, she turned to stripping, and experienced bodily exploitation and harassment both at work and outside of the workplace. Far from a conclusion, Taylor ends her essay with a realization that her life as a feminist is a journey of self-discovery and learning to live without compromising her values.

In contrast to these contemporary activist texts, feminism currently is also being explored in a highly academic context. As universities gradually gained departments of Women and Gender Studies, and theoretical departments began to approach feminist theory through Philosophy, Politics, and Sociology, the realm of feminist theory in the academic context became increasingly sophisticated (Routledge

1998:582), allowing for fascinating and in-depth analyses, but simultaneously alienating these theories from non-academic women. Rosi Braidotti (1999), a contemporary Australian philosopher, studies women and the body through an examination of academic literature on monsters. Braidotti unpacks teratological discourses. Teratology is the study of abnormal physical development, a field of study, Braidotti asserts, that is approached passionately in academic work, resulting in what she deems wild theories about monsters and their origins. The study of monsters can be associated with the study of engendered bodies, as sexually different bodies are viewed as contemporary monsters. Due to the ability of women to reproduce, and the possibility of women producing stillborn or deformed children, the analysis of monsters and their origins is highly gendered and often revolves around sexed bodies. This is largely a result of the understanding that monsters must, like humans, be a product of sexual difference, and be born of gendered female bodies.

Further, Braidotti’s writing is highly theoretical and inaccessible to non-academics, however the ways that we approach difference—with fear, wonder, fascination, and even horror, is immediately relevant to the other, the different ones. As a result,

Braidotti is a relevant contemporary theorist studying bodies and difference; however,

the extent to which her work reaches and/or reflects the experiences of women is an interesting point of inquiry.

Similarly to Braidotti, Elizabeth Grosz (1999), an Australian feminist philosopher has dedicated much of her studies to the body. Grosz destabilizes traditional oppositions, such as the mind and body, male and female, and the self and other, through an inquiry of corporality. In her own words, “corporeality can be seen as the material condition of subjectivity” (1999:381), lending itself as a rich area of inquiry for problematizing concepts such as the biological, social, and psychical constructions of the body. Grosz outlines a trend in academia to subordinate the body to the mind, and nature to culture. Through questioning our oppositional and hierarchical understandings of the world, Grosz unearths questions of both what our bodies are and how we understand and interact with them. Although her work is difficult to approach without a philosophical background, as it pulls largely from the work of Deleuze and Guattari (1987), Grosz’s destabilization of identity both reflects and fuels a contemporary trend of examining new ways of being and self-identifying.

Grosz and Braidotti are among many contemporary feminist scholars who are working to critique and dismantle dichotomies, each working within a different paradigm and project (Butler 2004; Flax 1990; Fraser 2013; Stefano 1991). Although far from being ubiquitous, discussions of the wide range of sexual and gender identities are promoting a movement away from rigid binary identities, towards a more holistic subjectivity.

Despite the differences between the theorists and authors presented within this literature review, they have all worked towards, or are working towards, a way of understanding their bodies and sexualities in a world that does not yet allow for subjectivities as multiple. By reflecting on the questions these authors ask, the ways they ask them, and where those questions come from, the review of literature becomes less of an examination of theories themselves, and more of a vicarious experience of feminine embodiment and how it is expressed in feminist theory.

Throughout this thesis the notion of the experience of living in a sexed and gendered body will be examined, relating women’s experiences to the questions and problems posed in this literature review.

The methodology I will use to frame this research and integration of collected data and theoretical literature, as well as the method through which I will examine the experience of living in a sexed and gendered body will be explicated in the following chapter.

CHAPTER 3: Methods and Methodology

In order to relate the previous chapter on feminist theory to women’s lived experiences of their bodies and sexualities, I conducted semi-structured interviews with four women. The structure of my research approach and discussion of the sample is presented in this chapter.

Methodology

Epistemology is the study of “the nature, sources and limits of knowledge”

(Routledge 1998:362), and when reconceptualized as feminist epistemology, emphasizes “standpoint positions…and…genealogical and interpretive practices”

(Routledge 1998:598) It is from this reconceptualization of modernist epistemology that a new methodology is necessitated and developed. A methodology is “a theory and analysis of how research does or should proceed” (Harding 1987:3), connecting how data are collected (methods) with how subjects can have knowledge

(epistemology). As such, any transformation of epistemology requires a reconfiguration of methodology as well. Grounded theory, the methodology coined by Glaser and Strauss (1967) in the mid 1960s, is structured in such a manner as to validate the generation of theory through qualitative data interpretation. This methodology relies on a scientific and systematic kind of knowledge about one’s own data (Glaser and Strauss 1967:225). Grounded theory as a methodology was the subject of many critiques, largely accusing this scientific method of qualitative social

data collection and analysis as being positivist and reductionist (Hesse-Biber, Leavy, and Yaiser 2004:5). Positivism and reductionism are problematic as they approach social phenomena as scientific objects of knowledge that can be universalized to all human experiences. These critiques were not merely polemical, however, they were also creative, and constructed a multiplicity of methodologies fitting of the shift to feminist epistemology.

From these new methodologies, I will be using feminist standpoint methodology. Standpoint refers to the “different standpoints, or vantage points, from which social life is experienced” (Hesse-Biber et al. 2004:15). Standpoint theory was developed out of the work of Dorothy Smith, who developed a “sociology for women”

(1989:105). The goal of this new primacy of the standpoint is to “go beyond our interviewing practices and our research relationships to explore methods of thinking that will organize our inquiry and write our sociological texts so as to preserve the presence of actual subjects” (Smith 1989:111). Standpoint theory rejects the notion of an objective view of the world, and positively affirms the standpoint of oppressed peoples (Sprague and Kobrynowicz 2006:27). This privileging of the standpoint of oppressed peoples is in direct response to the androcentric objectivity affirmed in grounded theory and classical epistemology (Sprague and Kobrynowicz 2006:32).

Standpoint theory relies on two central premises, the situated-knowledge thesis and the thesis of epistemic advantage. The situated-knowledge thesis asserts that “social location systematically influences our experiences, shaping and limiting what we know, such that knowledge is achieved from a particular standpoint” (Intemann

2010:783), yielding the name of standpoint theory. Smith asserts the purpose of this standpoint approach as “generating the everyday bases of actual experiences,” and emphasizing the daily lived experiences as the starting point of social inquiry

(1989:176). The second premise, the thesis of epistemic advantage, affirms that

“some standpoints, specifically the standpoints of marginalized or oppressed groups, are epistemically advantaged (at least in some contexts)” (Intemann 2010:783).

Patricia Hill Collins (2003) explores the epistemic advantage that the standpoint of marginalized groups have in her account of the importance of Black feminist thought.

From these two premises, the feminist epistemological view of situated knowledge and the social science data collection can influence one another and be put into practice.

A major advantage of approaching the social sciences through the methodology of standpoint theory is that gender can be conceived not as a given state that determines other experiences and states, but as an experience that is affected by external and internal forces, social and psychological, discursive and material. In this conception of gender the common pitfalls of binarized and naturalized accounts of genders can be avoided, and gender can be researched with a respect for its social, constructed, and fluid context. As addressed by Sandra Harding, “since gender relations are fully social relations, they cannot be historically static, for they must change over time in any given society” (2008:113).

Methods

This research draws on a convenience sample of four interviewees. The convenience sample was purposive, as I wanted to examine a multigenerational sample of women. Beyond a diversity of ages, I also looked for participants I knew were open and comfortable talking about their bodies and sexualities. This was not to seek participants who were necessarily comfortable with their bodies and sexualities, but rather those who were comfortable discussing their bodies and sexualities.

The interviews were conducted in the respective interviewee’s homes, with the exception of Emily, whose interview was conducted via skype. The interviews ranged from half an hour to almost two hours, and followed a semi-structured interview guide. Prior to beginning this research, I obtained research ethics approval through the Acadia University Ethics Board.

The Sample

Table 1 presents individual characteristics of the sample of interviewees. The sample is diverse in age, ranging from 19 to 82. Two participants had children, and two did not. Three were in long-term relationships, while one was currently single.

Three participants are university graduates, while the fourth is currently attending university. The first interviewee, Sherrill, is a 19 year old student in a “long term” partnership with another woman. Janice, the second interviewee, is a 27 year old working in the health industry. The third interviewee, Hayes, is a 56 year old business owner with two children. The fourth and final interviewee, Emily, is an 82

year old retired woman with three children. The interviewees are described in Table 1, firstly described by age as the sample was purposively age stratified, then described by education, employment, relationship status, and presence of children.

Table 2: Sample Description

Pseudonym Age Education Employment Relationship Children Status Sherrill 19 years University Employed Long term No old student part-time partnership with children another woman Janice 26 years University Employed Single No old graduate full-time children Hayes 56 years University Small Married Two old graduate business children owner Emily 82 years University Retired Married Three old graduate children

Data Analysis

Each of the interviews were audio recorded using the program Audacity, then transcribed using the program Express Scribe. The transcription process took a period of two weeks. After transcription, the interviews were then coded, loosely following the three step coding process illustrated by Charmaz (2008). This method of coding follows grounded theory, which as a method rather than methodology is accessible and provides a structure for accurate analysis. As an “emergent method,” grounded theory “starts with a systematic, inductive approach to collecting and analyzing data to develop theoretical analyses” (Charmaz 2008:155). This method begins with open coding, then axial and source coding. The open coding process allows themes within the data to emerge and respects the nature of qualitative data analyses of subjectivities, then through axial and source coding the data is systematically analyzed and emergent themes are identified. The results are presented and discussed in the following chapter.

CHAPTER 4: Results and Discussion

“I think through learning about women’s empowerment, I don’t know what the correlation is, but for some reason at the same time I’m also becoming more comfortable and more body positive about myself.”

- Sherrill

In this chapter I will integrate the previously analyzed concepts and themes with the interviews outlined in the previous chapter. The four multigenerational interviews provide evidence of the lived experiences of these women relating to the topics explored in feminist theoretical work. This chapter will be organized by a presentation of themes and subthemes both present in the theoretical analysis and the interview data. The major organizing themes are: concepts, sexuality, and bodies.

CONCEPTS

Recall the overview and analysis of concepts central to the project at hand presented in the literature review chapter: the contemporary condition, progress, and the ideal. Each of these themes were expanded upon in the interview process resulting in a variety of similarities and discrepancies across the represented age cohorts.

Contemporary Condition

As previously discussed in the literature review chapter, the concept of the contemporary condition refers to the current state of society—the way things are right

now (Walker 2007). Within this project it is necessary to reflect on how gender is experienced today in order to examine past changes and prescribe future changes.

Each of the four participants identified their understandings of the contemporary condition with an emphasis on the ubiquity of gender in their experiences. There was a consensus across every interview that affirmed the effects of gender on every aspect of human lives. Sherill asserted, “I think gender affects people’s experiences in every single way possible,” while Janice similarly stated that, “it shapes everything that we do.” Hayes felt that the effects of gender were “massive… it’s a really obvious difference,” and while Emily agreed, she also emphasized “in comparison to when I was probably your age, women have a lot more possibilities.”

The participants’ analyses of the contemporary condition, however, diverged beyond the agreement of the ubiquity of gender. Sherrill stressed that gender, with its all-encompassing effects, was entirely socialized. As social beings, therefore, gender is an integral aspect of our experiences of the world. Janice saw gender as very visible in sporting communities, as dividing lines between masculinity and femininity are blurred in traditionally masculine activities such as sport. Although this blurred the lines of gender divides, for Janice the experience of participating in “masculine” activities and acquiring a muscular, “masculine” frame led her to become even more aware of gendering, wondering if she was “feminine enough.” Hayes emphasized that the visibility of gender was present in gender performance, especially the ways in which gender performance is confined by regulations on femininity. This was especially important to her as a business owner and a parent of two children, a male

and a female. “[There’s] a really obvious difference, even in the way I parent. My protectiveness of one (referring to daughter), my allowances for one’s independence

(referring to son).” Emily asserted that although gender was still an essential part of daily life, women have many more opportunities than they did in her youth.

Examples of this were the opportunity of women to more freely sexually express themselves, and broadening definitions of womanhood allowing for a more varied gender experience.

Progress

The notion of progress over time that was introduced by Emily in the previous paragraph was also present in each of the other three interviews. Hayes affirmed that society has changed and progressed towards gender equity, but was adamant that this progress was a result of women’s work. When asked if she thought society had made progress towards gender equity, she responded “No. I think women have. I think women have taken control of themselves more…through their tenacity.” Further she asserted, “I think women are powerhouses. And I don’t think that it’s because they’re allowed.” Janice believed that although there has been progress towards more opportunities for women, the most important progress was that “there is recognition of where we need to make progress, and…that’s one of the biggest steps.” Sherrill was hesitant to affirm social progress, due to the popular association of social progress to institutional (or formal) progress, such as suffrage or wage equality.

Despite her discomfort, Sherrill cited the increase of representation of non-

heterosexual women in popular media as an indicator of social progress, and asserted that future progress would entail fewer barriers for women to the public sphere.

Ideal

As Sherrill cited progress for the future, she employed the concept of the ideal, which is explored in Nicholson’s discussion of the diversities of ideals in feminist theory (1997b). Following her prescription of fewer barriers to the public sphere, the ideal of free access to the public sphere emerges as an ideal for Sherrill: “I think slowly women are gaining more access to the social sphere, and they don’t necessarily need to focus so much on the private sphere.” She expanded this ideal, imagining that the ideal world would be free of gender and sexuality labels, would be sex positive, and generally more open to experiences and discussions of subjectivity.

Janice’s ideal mirrored Hayes’ ideal in that they both desired a simpler world. Janice stated, “Now there’s a bit too much going on all the time, everyone’s connected all the time and it’s a little bit much.” Hayes referred to the simplicity of Nova Scotia as her reasoning for moving here, “For me, it’s market people, that’s my sense of community. They’re just so gracious in their simplicity,” identifying community and simplicity as her ideals to progress towards. Both Janice and Hayes identified technology as complicating and limiting human contact, and disrupting community.

This spoke to an exclusion, for Janice and Hayes, of technology from the ideal world.

Hayes stated “there’s more awareness of [the ideal woman] through social media…they’re in a constant state of evolution, pictorially.” Hayes, however, further addressed the notions of simplicity, community, equality of opportunity, equality of

time, and fortitude as ideals. Emily, after affirming that we are indeed closer to the ideal than at the beginning of her life, cited that in an ideal world “there would be no differentiation whatsoever…[but] I don’t think that could ever come about. I don’t even think it’s reasonable. Because women are still women in many ways, and men are still men in many ways.”

These notions of the dissolving of difference, explored by androgyny-oriented authors such as the Radicalesbians (1997), Gayle Rubin (1998), Catharine

MacKinnon (1997), and Monique Wittig (1997), and the idea of gender as part of one’s essential character, as demonstrated in the theories of Shulamith Firestone

(1970), Nancy Chodorow (1997), Helene Cixous (2007), and Luce Irigaray (1997) are frequently discussed in feminist theory. Within the four interviews, these notions of androgyny and essentialism were implicitly prevalent, although rarely addressed explicitly. As will be explicated further in this chapter, the two younger interviewees,

Sherrill and Janice were predominantly androgyny-oriented. In contrast, the two older interviewees, Hayes and Emily, were predominantly essentialism-oriented. This maps onto the time frame of these paradigms, wherein essentialism was popularized in first wave and early second wave feminisms, and androgyny became the dominant paradigm in late second wave and third wave feminisms.

SEXUALITY

Within the category of sexuality, the themes of the subjectivity of women’s experiences, seizing the means to reproduction, the elimination of sexual difference, and sexuality as constructed, as well as the fear and shame of masturbating will be

explicated in reference to both the theoretical literature presented in Chapter 1, and the interview data. These themes were chosen due to their appearance in both the theoretical literature review and the interviews conducted. The rearticulation of these themes in the interviews demonstrates their continuing relevance and importance, despite being introduced in literature going back 20 years.

Subjectivity of Women’s Experiences

The topic of the subjectivity of women’s experiences, as discussed by Gayle

Rubin (1998) in her polemic account of essentialism as homogenizing women and their experiences, is reflected in the lives of the women interviewed in this project.

Sherrill addressed this culture of homogenization of women’s experiences in her personal experience, stating that “in all the sexual experiences I’ve had with men…they think they know my body better than I do,” as a result of their experiences with other women. Sherrill found herself often frustrated by this broad social assumption she perceives, namely, that all women experience their sexualities in the same way. Janice spoke at length about the ways that sports broadened her understandings of gender, and spoke to the need to educate “not just women, but men as well, that it’s ok to experience your gender and figure out what that means for you,” asserting the same need for acceptance of the experiential discovery of sexuality.

Hayes spoke to her personal appreciation for the subjectivity of women’s experiences of their sexualities, stating “I’m not extroverted in my sexuality [but] I appreciate people that can do that.”

Seizing the Means to Reproduction

Although Shulamith Firestone’s call for women to seize the means to reproduction referred to advances in reproductive technology allowing women to reproduce external to the body (1970), the notion of freedom from reproduction was addressed by both of the post-menopausal interview participants, Hayes and Emily.

Emily discussed her personal experience of an unwanted pregnancy at age 19, resulting in the need to get married “too young.” Emily addressed the importance of birth control for women’s autonomy, as in her youth “for female birth control…there was really nothing. Really you were 100% dependent on the male.” This account of

Emily’s early marriage highlights the differing choices women made as a result of the social and material conditions of the time. Due to the lack of viable birth control options, and resultant unprotected intercourse, Emily became pregnant, leading her to marriage and homemaking as the socially acceptable choice. At that time, reproduction impeded her independence and freedom.

Hayes’ experience of freedom from her reproductive capabilities, however, was realized not through female birth control, but through menopause. She explains her difficulties with birth control. “I couldn’t take the pill, I couldn’t use an IUD, I couldn’t use the cup.” She clarified that her frequent pregnancies were not a result of her physical inability to use female birth control. Hayes stated “I got pregnant, that was how I hurt myself… Because then I had to go through the shame of an abortion.”

Because pregnancy and subsequent abortion was Hayes’ mode of self-harm, as she felt that as a result of her pregnancies she had to terminate them, in the loss of

reproductive capabilities she also lost her ability to self-harm. “I think menopause allowed me my control back…cause I couldn’t hurt myself anymore.” In losing her ability to self-harm through menopause, Hayes’ story illuminates the shame women experience in reproduction when this reproduction is not socially accepted, such as pregnancies that are not planned, financially responsible, or within a nuclear family.

These two accounts of freedom from reproduction, although differing greatly, affirm the primacy of reproductive abilities in women’s experiences.

Elimination of Sexual Difference

Androgyny scholars, such as Shulamith Firestone (1970), the Radicalesbians

(1997), Gayle Rubin (1998), and Monique Wittig (1997) posed the need to work towards an elimination of sexual difference in favor of androgyny and pansexuality.

This ideal was addressed by each of the interview participants, in slightly varying ways. Sherrill posited that ideally, either gender would not exist, or gender would not matter, “in the future, [gender equity would be] no gender whatsoever.” Janice was less radical in her views, looking forward to a world that embraced a natural fluidity of sexuality and sexual experiences, asserting the ideal of “teaching not just women but men as well that it’s ok to experience your gender and figure out what that means for you.” Hayes addressed this from a personal standpoint, citing that although she treated her children as individuals, it was impossible to ignore the socially gendered world they exist in. “My kids have been given every opportunity to develop their own ways and it’s not at all gender specific,” but “there’s just so many rules and regulations for girls, like when they grow up and can’t wear this, and can wear that,

and if you wear that you’re a tart and if you don’t wear that you’re not cool.” Emily took the elimination of difference to a broader spectrum, calling for more than just the elimination of sexual difference in her ideal world. Ideally, “we [would never think] male/female … black/white … Muslim/Jew”; asserting the need to eliminate all difference.

Sexuality as Constructed

The Radicalesbian’s illustrated an account of lesbianism as an othering label due to the nature of sexuality as a category created by “rigid sex roles” (1997:154), which Sherrill strongly reflected in her discussion of her own sexuality. Although she does not identify her sexuality, Sherrill self defines as a sexual other. For Sherrill,

“being a sexual outsider is anything that…exists outside of the realm of heteronormativity.” Sherrill asserted that for her, this rigid sexual identity heterosexuality relies on socially imposed sexual roles.

Within MacKinnon’s (1997) radical account of the construction of sexuality through masculine sexual desire there is a less radical account imbedded—that sexuality is socially constructed1. Sherrill, Janice, Hayes, and Emily expressed such a view in varying ways.

Sherrill, as someone who has chosen not to identify her sexuality, referred to her revelation about the problems in socially constructed sexual identities. She asked herself:

1 It is still possible within this view that society is so patriarchal that its constructions must be a direct reflection of masculine sexual desire.

If I were single right now, what would people call me? Because when I’m with a guy I’m straight, and when I’m with a girl people assume I’m a lesbian, unless I tell them that I also like guys, and then I’m a bisexual. What would I be if I wasn’t with anyone?

Sherrill’s story illustrates the failures of sexual identity to accurately reflect the experiences of the individual being identified. Sherrill further identified the ways that due to the patriarchal nature of society, women presenting themselves for society could be equated to women presenting themselves for men. Janice echoed this concern saying, “whatever your sexual ideal is, you present [for] them. Like, you don’t wear a mini skirt that you don’t want anyone to look up.” Janice asserted that this presentation for sexual partners frequently meant men. Janice and Hayes both expressed their general concerns with the categorization of sexuality into identities.

They addressed the problems of sexual identity as failing to express the fluidity of sexuality.

Hayes referenced her own experiences of sexual abuse as constructing her individual sexuality as something unsafe, unfree, and conditional. However, Hayes found that despite ongoing struggles with body image, the experience of aging and the changing body and prioritization gave Hayes gradual liberation from her need to present for men. Emily expressed concerns with the increasingly younger sexualization of girls. Starting often before puberty, she spoke about the ways that young girls dress as purposively sexualized for a male gaze.

Fear and Shame in Masturbating

In Hélène Cixous’ call for women to write (2007), she references the similarities between the gendering of writing and masturbating—both constructed as shameful when enacted by women. Sherrill, Hayes, and Emily addressed this shame surrounding female masturbation, either explicitly or implicitly. Emily spoke about the taboo surrounding discussion of sexuality in her youth in the 1950s, at a time when even discussion among peers was unheard of. This resulted in a culture of sexual shame and fear. As Emily stated: “It was very secretive, and it involved a lot of shame. As much pleasure it was, it was not discussable.” However, even when discussion of sexuality and masturbation was accepted socially, they were still discussed with shame. Hayes addressed the shame around sexuality and masturbation in her friend-group both in their youth and in current day; however, she also told a story of seeing a friend exiting a sex shop and the humor they both found in the encounter. “One time I saw one of my girlfriends at a sex shop in Toronto and it was hilarious. We both saw each other as we were leaving and we killed ourselves laughing.” Because masturbation was so taboo, and because the act of purchasing goods at a sex shop implied some pursuit of sexual pleasure, their mutual trust allowed them to see the situation as funny rather than embarrassing. Hayes frequently cited mutual trust as fundamental to sexuality. Sherrill spoke at length about the shame and fear she saw in her peers in high school, ranging from a fear of speaking openly about masturbation to a fear of masturbation itself—associating masturbation with dirtiness, masculinity, or somehow against the natural order. She referred to her

frustration with peers who feared masturbation, responding to them, “You let a man put a penis in your vagina, and you’re afraid to put your own fingers up there?”

Sherrill found, however, that in the university environment sexuality was discussed much more openly.

BODIES

In the following section I will examine themes central to the body. In Wittig’s critique of essentialism (1997), she uses the example of a lesbian society, wherein women complete all of the roles necessary for survival and flourishing, traditionally gendered either masculine or feminine, to illustrate the irrationality of assuming an essential nature of either gender. Hayes brought up a very similar example in her discussion on the capacities of women. She asserted, “If you threw 15 women in one spot in the world and you threw 15 men in one spot in the world, I bet the women would be pretty happy.” As fully capable members of society, regardless of the social tendencies of men and women to prefer different tasks (ignoring the largely socialized aspects of these preferences), women are not reliant upon an aspect of personhood that is purely and essentially masculine.

Deconstruction of Notions of Womanhood

As Wittig critiqued the ideology of essentialism (1997), she expressed that the notion of womanhood needs to be destroyed for the liberation of all women. Despite the radical nature of this claim, it found resonance in these four women’s lives, as they experienced the tensions of living a subjective and varying life while existing

within a rigid gender identity. Sherrill spoke to her experiences of early socializing of gender and her understanding of womanhood, “I thought what it meant to be a woman was to get your education, get married, and have kids,” asserting that she only freed herself from this prescriptive script through education. As such, Sherrill felt strongly that open conversations surrounding gender and engendered expectations were vital, and should be initiated as early as elementary school, in institutions she referred to as primary socializers. Janice spoke to her personal insecurities as a teenager in sports, wherein she wished she had understood that gender was a subjective experience, and that not falling within her rigid conceptions of womanhood had no bearing on her ability to be feminine or sexy, stating that, “It’s always changing and it will continue to change and it’s something I’m going to have to work at to feel comfortable, no matter what.”

When Hayes spoke about womanhood, her ideal related less to a destruction of the notion of womanhood, but rather to an expansion of our conceptions of womanhood to accommodate the incredible power and resilience of women, stating that as a woman “[you] have far many more balls in the air… You’re the caregiver, you’re the rational one, you’re the food person, you’re the one that makes the money, you’re the one that creates a home environment.” Emily’s discussion of the notion of womanhood related to her experience of menopause, when the medical community pressured her into taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT). This resulted in a very smooth transition from pre-menopause to post-menopause for her; however, the discourse surrounding HRT concerned her. She recounted that HRT was pushed as

“the fountain of youth” and “nirvana,” simultaneously augmenting and alleviating her concerns with being part of the socially unattractive category of post-midlife women.

The Ideal Woman

As Susan Bordo analyzed the effects of the socially constructed ideal woman, with her minimized (quiet, modest, etc.) personality, identity, and space, she uncovered the roots of many of women’s struggles (1997). Although she identifies hysteria, agoraphobia, and anorexia specifically, Bordo’s examination of these specific effects of the social regulation of women reflects the ways women respond to the ideal woman notion more generally. This examination of the effects of the ideal woman character imposed on women is expanded upon in the lives of the four women interviewed.

Emily spoke about her need to be sexually passive in her youth, prior to her marriage at age 19, asserting that expressing one’s sexuality was “very repressive, there was a lot of shame involved with it.” Although she did not experience much dating due to her early marriage, Emily identified the ideal of sexual passivity in women as socially enforced and problematic.

Hayes spoke about the inundation of images of the ideal women through contemporary social media technologies. In watching her daughter experience the world with constant visual representations of the ideal woman, Hayes expressed that young women and girls are experiencing a heightened desire for perfection. Janice similarly vocalized concerns about the ubiquity of social media representations of the ideal woman: “I think it’s harder [now] because they see girls on TV or on

multimedia, learning ‘this is what a woman should look like’…they’re just exposed to so much body wise.” However, she found comfort in the shift from the cultural ideal of extreme skinniness to a more athletic form. She recognized the potential problems with the cultural ideal of athleticism as well; however, she felt that there is an ongoing cultural move towards bodily acceptance. Sherrill spoke less of the bodily ideal, but articulated a desire to be a “classic beauty,” despite acknowledging the patriarchal and racist undertones of such an aesthetic ideal. This unavoidable desire for the ideal speaks to its power—even women who are actively aware of the need to displace such ideals find themselves drawn to them.

Body Image

Within personal essays published as part of the third-wave project to expand feminism from academia back into women’s lives, Abra Fortune Chernick called for a primacy of body love and acceptance in the feminist agenda (2001). The need for this focus on body love is immediately evident in conversation with the women interviewed for this project, not only in their personal lives but also in their accounts of the body image issues of their peers. Sherrill, in discussing her past struggles with eating disorders and continuing negative body image, expressed that these struggles were commonplace and in no way exceptional, asserting that “I’ve suffered from eating disorders because of [difficulty loving my body], as a lot of my friends have, and a lot of my friends still do. I don’t think I’m unique in that way.” Similarly,

Janice discussed her struggles with body image, especially as she found her athletic body changing into what she identified as a more womanly shape, involving hips and

thighs. Janice felt that alongside her peers, she was her own worst critic when it came to her body, and stated “if we saw a mirror image of our own bodies, we would probably think it was beautiful too, but it’s when you’re reflecting on yourself that’s always the hardest part.” Hayes discussed a chronic negative body image, starting very young with dieting and exercising, and mentioned seeing similar gendered insecurities in her daughter, “When I was younger…I had a really bad self-image, so I was constantly on a diet.”

Emily also reflected upon her chronic issues with body image: “I guess I felt always that you’re either ten pounds too heavy at a certain point, or your hair’s not right, or your nose isn’t right.” Emily’s discussion of her aging body brought up a type of mind/body divide, wherein she felt that although her body aged, she herself was not aged. This manifests itself especially on public transportation, when she is automatically offered a seat, and wonders humorously, “Oh my god, what are they seeing that I don’t see?” Despite this, she found that although through aging she lost confidence in her naked body, her general body image was more positive and accepting, “I think in general I’ve had a good feeling about my body and I still do.

I’m going to be 82 and I still feel good about it.” Emily also takes comfort in her partner’s continued efforts to make her feel good about her physical self.

Each of the women interviewed identified the engendered experiences of aging bodies as important to their lives. Although Sherrill is only 19, through watching her mother experience menopause Sherrill gained sympathy for the medicalization of women’s aging bodies and the effect that this medicalization and

pathologizing of women’s aging bodies has on women’s body and self images,

“[nothing’s] a problem until the medical community makes it a problem, and provides a fix. And I think that has a huge effect on the way women experience their bodies.

Especially through aging.” Janice reflected similar ideas. As her body began to lose elasticity and a very athletic appearance, her body image shifted drastically, “It’s going to change, and sag in certain areas, and get tighter in other areas, and that’s ok.”

Although Hayes found empowerment in aging, as it freed her from the need to present herself for men, she also found that her aging body “betrayed” her. As she lost physical strength, she felt that she also lost control; however, she asserted “you have to really accept it, but you also have to work with it and make your body work for you better.” Through working with a personal trainer, Hayes is finding ways to make her aging body function in the ways she needs it to.

Subordination of Body to Mind

Grosz argues for the necessity of moving beyond binary and subordinating accounts of the world (2011). Sherrill and Hayes both address, although not explicitly, the notion of the body as culturally less valuable than the mind. Sherrill expressed her body as something that has feeling and can retain memories, and something that is hers, but also that her relationship to her body is instrumental: “My body has feeling and it’s capable of remembering experiences and it’s instrumental to a lot of the things that I do.” This notion of the body as instrumental becomes fascinating in

Sherrill’s discussion of the importance of bodies to new relationships. As the first thing you experience in meeting a new person is their corporeal form, Sherrill feels

more pressure to have an ideal body when she is in estranged locations or situations, such as in a room of new people or at work. Hayes subordinates the body in a more explicit way, in her discussion of her mother. Hayes’ mother was a model and Hayes expressed disappointment that her mother spent so much time and effort on her body, failing to develop her mind, “She was very concerned with her looks, and that’s too bad. That she didn’t develop herself more.”

Sherrill and Hayes both express a binary understanding of the mind and body, and an implicit subordination of the body to the mind. One can see this phenomenon as an illustration of a schism between feminist philosophy and women’s experiences, or a time lapse that must pass before theory can take hold in women’s lives, or a yet unrealized ideal.

Community-Building through Confession

In the anthology of third-wave essays edited by Rebecca Walker, Gina Dent

(1995) explores her personal experiences of arriving at feminism. She problematizes the authority associated with Feminisms and prescribes community-building through confession as the conclusive agenda of feminism. This notion of building communities of openness and confession was addressed by each of the interview participants in differing and interesting ways. Emily spoke about the progress she sees in the world, where there are books and TV shows openly discussing sex and gender, women can have long term relationships without marriage and non- heterosexual relationships, and open dialogue with peers and family about bodies and sexuality are no longer predominantly taboo. Hayes spoke fondly about her family’s

openness surrounding menstruation, and discussed her openness with her children about bodies and sexualities. Further, she expressed appreciation for the women in her community who were open and honest about themselves, wherein they appreciate their sexualities and bodies and are not afraid to be truthful about that. Janice spoke about formal sexual education in her elementary school, where she felt that although the educators attempted to create an open space for asking questions and expressing feelings, she was uncomfortable asking her question “Can you still pee with a tampon in.” Despite the comical tone of her example, Janice expressed concerns about the need for safe and open spaces of communication for young girls, in order to promote openness about the subjectivities of experiencing body image, gender, and sexuality.

Sherrill found that in coming to university she experienced openness around sexuality that she longed for in high school. The open and honest environment allowed her to feel comfortable in her sexuality. Further, she prescribed that social progress towards gender equity could be obtained through men accepting women’s accounts of gender inequity. By responding to accounts of sexual violence or gender inequity with disdain or disbelief, men have the ability to create and maintain a space not safe for confession, and therefore not a space of community. Emily’s experience of community-building through confession is limited, which she cites largely due to her age. As she was married and in the work force before the late second-wave feminist activism promoting community-building, largely through the women’s health movement, she felt that her experience of this activism was limited. Emily recognized, however, the drastic difference between acceptable topics of discussion

across time, citing that, “Women have so much more possibility of expressing themselves [sexually] than we could have when I was younger.” Although the return to a focus on community-building through confession in the third wave is reflective of the second wave focus on community spaces for conversation, these third-wave spaces are a reinvigorated space for community building. Addressing similar topics as their second-wave foremothers, such as learning about their bodies and discussing issues surrounding sexual assault, third-wave focuses lie, as Rebecca Walker addresses (1995), in promoting intersectional feminist spaces.

CHAPTER 5: Conclusion

This thesis first presents a discussion of the selection of the diverse and broad feminist theories on women’s bodies and sexualities, spanning from second-wave feminist theory to current feminist theory. This overview of theory is then integrated and compared with the lived experiences of four women of diverse ages, mapping the relationship (if any) between feminist theory and women’s lived experiences. By approaching this project with the goal of understanding the lives of these four women and how feminist theory maps onto their experiences (rather than the goal of generalizable data) I avoided reducing these women to research subjects.

As the goal of this thesis was to investigate the experiences of women as knowledge-holders of their own embodiment and sexuality, and integrate these experiences with the theoretical developments of feminist theory on the body and sexuality, this thesis helps fill a gap in academic literature. There is a wealth of writing on developments in feminist theory on the body and sexuality, and there is a wealth of research being done on women and their bodies; however, the mapping out of the space between feminist theory and women’s experiences has been neglected, and this thesis begins to fill that gap. It is important that moving into the future of feminist theory, this junction is explored. Feminist studies originated as a merging of activism with the academy, and this thesis serves as a reminder of that origin.

Feminist studies need to maintain and solidify this original commitment to negotiating the spaces between theory and lived experience.

Taking this thesis as a point of departure, one can identify two dominant trajectories. Firstly, the ways that feminist theory impacts the lives of women demonstrates that continued work in feminist theory is necessary for progress towards an equitable world. Secondly, this is a preliminary examination of the spaces between feminist theory and women’s experiences. This space needs further examination and analysis, in order to move beyond the current segregation between theoretical and empirical studies. Only by moving past this segregation can feminist studies be re-enchanted with vitality and potentiality.

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