The Social Construction of Women's Bodies

 Women's Bodies Throughout Time

• The property of men
• defective and dangerous
• Aristotle: Only a sufficient amount of heat could allow an embryo to develop. Otherwise one became female.
• Lack of heat was associated with a number of other deficiencies of all kinds in all of the European "sciences" of the time.
• By 1900, women were still property of their husbands and experienced a "Civil death" at the time of their marriage (identity and legal status dependent on the husband instead of their father).
• husband had all rights of women, their property and even their children and became the basis for marital law in the US.
• African American women as literal slaves during this and the colonial period were the absolute property of their masters and were subject to rape and a variety of other abuses and entertainments
• animalistic hypersexuality
• inherent inferiority
• Challenges to men's ownership of women's bodies
• Married Women's Property Act 1839
• Women's universal suffrage (100 years in 2020)
• Women's education -Oberlin 1833 (higher)
• Backlash:
• Darwininan theory
• male selection
• male evolutes/female passivity
• female energy expenditure (actually argues for female selection) 4xs
• EXEMPLIFIED THE PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL FRAGILITY OF WOMEN
• Medical Narratives about women's inferiority (especially middle class white women)
• sexual desire ruined beauty and brought on "hysteria" and a plethora of other illnesses
• greater suffering in childbirth was caused by women getting educations (larger brained children)
• "rebellious" or ""unhappy" women were routinely given surgeries to remove their sex organs (internal and external" as a treatment
• BLACK women's narratives were often the opposite-stress strength and beastiality
• Working Class women also were more robust (as middle class women were made frail by their affluence)
• Muller vs Oregon created labor laws that restricted the jobs women could have to "protect" them
• 1920 -1980 not much changed
• 1984- raping your wife became "illegal" (property)
• Still have not passed the ERA
• Backlash (Faludi, et.al.)
• pressure to take control and "shape" more perfect bodies
• increasing thinness and, at the same time, larger boobs and butts
• standards are always shifting for women's bodies in a way that they don't for men's bodies
• Physical Culture movement and Men's bodies
• eugenics (strong physical specimens make strong children=country)
• Muscle men
• 1950- men have got to be muscled as an example of their masculinity, heightened for working class men.
• middle class men can get by with money=power, rather than body (no equivalent option for women).
• menstraul and menapausal women as "ill"
• anti-abortion movement

All in all the battle for equality for women requires at some level a DEFINITION OF WOMEN"S BODIES AND WHO OWNS THEM.

Believing is Seeing (Judith Lorber)

• Sex is a social construction (like gender)
• there is no definition of female or male that could include all those who are labeled as one of the binary sex categories
• intersexed individuals are illustrative (one) of the fallacy of binary sex categories
• Once we accept this binary, we construct a world which heightens (or even creates) these differences
• the human built environment is designed for male bodies (because of greater male power I culture)
• gym equipment
• desks
• cars

Historically, biological sex has been defined in a variety of ways

• progression from attributing differences to religious demands (god) to the definitions given through science
• anatomy is destiny (wombs, breasts, menstruation, pregnancy)
• except for procreative hormones and organs, men and women have similar bodies (reality)
• When sex is ambiguous we alter infants to conform to binary classification
• based on penis size now/presence of ovaries in the 19th century where to be a full woman you needed to reproduce
• Men's social bodies are the definition of human
• gray's anatomy
• clinical trials

What Ideology and Power Differentials Congealed to Create These Categories?

• Bodies differ in many ways physiologically, BUT they are completely transformed by social practices to fit into the salient categories of a society (male and female/men women)
• women: menstruation, pregnancy, lactation
• men: spermproducers
• Competitive Sports
• have been designed to construct male identity
• a venue for legitimizing violence and aggression
• avenue for upward mobility
• physical competence an important marker for masculinity
• Gymnastic equipment sex differences
• men: adult male bodies/strength
• women:slim pubescent girl bodies/artistry
• media coverage: men 95%/Women 5%
• Seen as "bad"/dangerous for women
• infertility
• injury
• Sports construct men's bodies to be powerful and women's bodies to be sexual
• Dealing with disconnect between femininity and athletics
• athlete on the court/woman off the court
• redefine activity as feminine (bodybuilders and "flex appeal"
• demonstrating physical strength=unfeminine or lesbian
• Physical education (pre Title IX) minimized exertion, maximized a feminine appearance and manner (hygiene and uniform grade)
• included ironed embroidered uniform, white ankle socks, clean and neatly tied sneakers, clean and groomed hair and body (lineup began every class in 1960-1970s).

Hottest women athletes

Sports construct gendered bodies, technology constructs gendered Skills

• Technology
• women not built to use modern technologies
• cars/driving
• computers/tech (not clerical)
• Bathrooms
• the CULTURAL, physiological and demographic combinations of CLOTHING, FREQUENCY OF URINATION, MENSTRUATION, and CHILDCARE add up to generally greater bathroom use for women
• equity would mean more bathroom (not equal #) for women, and/or allowing the use of male restrooms or gender neutral rest rooms

Gendered and Sexed individuals do not arise from physiology but from the needs of the SOCIAL ORDER

• -reliable division of labor, reproduction-
• Religion and other cultural ideologies reinforce these boundaries and communicate what is required and what is taboo. 
• political power, control of resources and force are used to uphold this social order.

Dueling Dualisms (Anne Fausto Sterling)

• The entire enterprise of science, and knowledge in general is culture bound
• sex is just as difficult to define as gender because it is a cultural construct which has emerged historically
• there are shades of difference rather than dualities

Foucault's Bio-Power (Power over living bodies)

• Individual Body
• bio politics of the population
• normal takes precedence over natural (constrains choices)

What is homosexual (defining homo- and heterosexual-sexual)

• is sexuality a fundamental reality
• who you have sex with (or not part of a particular act or setting)
• who you are attracted to (this may vary over the course of ones life)
• is sexuality dualistic?
• can homosexual even capture the range and variability of same-sex desire?
• Kinsey Scale as limiting since it only has one axis
• bound to historical contexts
• QUEER: sexuality is a social construction
• homosexual and heterosexual built on the two sex model of male and female
• How is the body connected to sexuality?
• institutionalized homosexuality
• Sambia/Greek felatio
• circle jerk
• I kissed a girl/porn
• men in prison?
• is there an inborn sex drive or impulse?
• raised in isolation (no language or sex drive)
• do women enjoy, want sex?
• is sex important in a relationship?
• What constitutes sexual behavior?
• oral sex? anal sex? kissing? clothes off? Cuddling? Spooning? Inter-course? No intercourse?

Social Constructionists and Anthropology of Sexuality

• age-structured homosexuality
• gender-reversed homosexuality
• role-specialized homosexuality 
• modern gay movement

Third Genders

• institutional homosexuality

The importance of the body emerging in sexuality

• physiologies set the ground on which sexual experience is enacted
• physical variation profoundly affects the experience of gender and sexuality
• bodily functions are organized and given meaning by culture in the development of sexuality
• we constantly readjust our identity based on changes in our bodies and our understanding or perception of them
• Feelings (Grosz)
• the mind translates physiology into an interior sense of self
• innate drives become organized by physical experience into SOMATIC FEELINGS, which translate into what we call emotions
• physical activities and experiences CREATE the body
• the brain is trained and retrained and all brains are different

Becoming a Gendered Body (Karin Martin)

• preschools are places where children learn bodily discipline
• preschools are one place where children learn early on to perform gender through subtle and not so subtle cues
• gender becomes embodied early on, which makes gendered differences seem natural
• social life depends on the successful presenting, monitoring and interpreting of bodies
• a disciplined body creates a context for social relations
• signal manage and negotiate information about power and status
• our bodies are the site of gender
• gender rests not only on the surface of the body, in performance and doing, but. BECOMES EMBODIED-who we are physically and psychologically
• body postures, musculature, tensions in our bodies are created through embodied gender
• bodies are often a source of power for men
• women bodies are often a source of tentativeness and anxiety-can not use ones body to its fullest extent
• teachers constantly monitor children's bodily movements, comportment and practices
• produces docile bodies, prepared for the larger social world, and gendered bodies, prepared for adult gendered behavior
• dressing up:
• wearing a dress limited girls physicality (literally and socially) and made them subject to clothing interventions by teachers
• girls play dress up more, and gendered differences increased from ages 3-5
• relaxed behaviors:
• boys exhibited more relaxed behaviors than girls (increased 3-5)
• boys were encouraged to exhibit more relaxed behaviors
• girls are encouraged to pursue more formal behaviors (disciplined more for relaxed behaviors.
• boys often ignored disciplining of their behaviors
• children self-sort themselves and are sorted into appropriate behaviors
• boys take up more room because of this, even in formal settings
• voice:
• girls are more often told to be quiet or repeat themselves in a quieter, nicer, voice-girls voices are disciplined to be softer and less physical
• limiting girls voices also limited their activities (which accompanied the louder voice-jumping, running, etc)-bodies are supposed to be quiet
• limit girls ability to counter mistreatment
• Bodily Instruction
• boys are bodily instructed more often than girls, but ignore teachers 50% of the time
• boys receive much more of teachers loud reprimands audible to the whole group
• teachers bodily requests were less substantive than those to girls. They directed girls bodies.
• boys: DON'T do that
• girls: DO this
• Physical interaction teacher/child
• 94% directed at boys
• restrain or remove boys that have gone "too far" or could cause harm
• boys: more likely to associate physicality with struggle (with someone more powerful or angry)
• physical interactions between children
• girls and boys teach their same sex peers about their bodies
• imitate the physical behavior of the same sex
• more rough play and fighting among 3 than 5 year old girls (learn not to be too rough)
• boys physical engagement and rough play is considered enjoyable/not negative
• cross gender interactions were more likely to be negative than same sex interactions

Habitus and Sports: Skateboarding Culture and Gender Norms (Becky Beal and Charlene Wilson)

Letitia Bufoni

• various social fields such as ‘skateboarding media’, ‘D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself) culture’, and ‘lifestyle/action sports’ overlapped and worked to maintain gendered divisions within street skateboarding based upon the logics of individualism and embodiment.
• Masculine habituses were most closely associated with risk‐taking behaviors and technical prowess; they became significantly rewarded with social and cultural capital. Conversely, women’s habituses were considered as lacking in skill and aversive to risk‐taking. 
• Women thus came to be positioned as inauthentic participants in the street skateboarding social field and were largely excluded from accessing symbolic capital. 
• Corporate‐sponsored and supervised skate events which were explicitly set up to be gender inclusive provided a strong counter to ‘street’ practices. These ‘All Girl’ events were considered ‘positive’ and ‘empowering’ spaces by the women in our study. 
• the concept of social field to refer to various social contexts that have currency within street skateboarding including ‘skateboarding media’, ‘lifestyle/action sports’ and ‘D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself) culture’.
• The ways in which individuals come to be valued within a particular social field and across the range of social fields is determined by the recognition of their embodied attributes. 
• These embodied attributes are defined as the habitus- ‘a subconscious manifestation of social structure that includes social habits, values, ways of being, thinking and moving, which are collectively generated by social actors while being reinforced in others’  
• Those individuals whose habitus most closely matches the idealized practices and taste distinctions which operate within a particular social field can access material, social and cultural benefits. 
• The habitus represents a form of physical capital that can be translated into economic capital (e.g. money, services, property), social capital (e.g. power and status) and cultural capital (e.g. educational and professional opportunities). 
• Street skateboarders explicitly enact an urban identity that invokes freedom, non‐conformity and engagement with risk.
• Walk (2006) describes skateboarding as a masculine‐oriented culture that involves voluntary ‘self‐mutilation’ and ‘risk taking in which the definitive measure of social life made vital is the life routinely and systematically nearly ended’
• Authentic status is bestowed upon those individuals who are able to exemplify the core values of risk taking and D.I.Y. through their social interactions, way of speaking and dressing and use of urban spaces 
• supported by unequal representations in the skateboarding media (street skating is particularly masculinized and women are portrayed as sexual figures)
• the risk‐oriented version of ‘street’ masculinity found in the specialty media as anarchic, ‘unkempt’, ‘rebellious’ and gangster‐like. -heroic ‘outlaw’ masculinity represents ‘heterosexist adventure’; 
• the specialty skate texts chronicle the young men’s ‘predatory pursuits of girls and women’ along with concomitant narratives ‘of sexual conquests and defeats’ 
• Desired Habitus:
• risk taking
• dangerous
• oblivious to pain
• physical prowess
• technical know-how
• lower class (street wise masculinity)-despite their actual white, middleclass identities
• women skaters were described by male skaters as sexually promiscuous, unskilled and afraid to take risks-the men positioned the women as being outsiders to street skateboarding. 
• Media analysis
• men’s avid consumption of media representations led to them implementing exclusionary and marginalizing gendered practices themselves. 
• The women’s comments directly implicated the men’s role in reproducing these practices within various social contexts. 
• At a local level, the women noted that they were often harassed, intimidated, or chased away from street spaces. Many ended up quitting skateboarding altogether
• women in our study who were able to consistently access street spaces were usually allowed to do so only after being mentored by a male ‘insider’
• the ‘All Girl Skate Jam’ event became an important social context for women to skate without fear of being intimidated, excluded and harassed by men
• Conclusions
• action sports industry promotes and rewards a traditional version of heterosexual femininity that is linked with self‐responsibility, personal choice, and health and happiness. As a result, women from alternative backgrounds are seen as peripheral participants in the context of action/lifestyle sports culture
• women make significant inroads into snowboarding culture, they are still primarily showcased when they represent heterosexual attractiveness
• the widespread practice of foregrounding heterosexually attractive women tends to symbolically erase women who appear lesbian, bisexual, queer, or “unfeminine”