The Body

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cressida J. Heyes
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Phenomenological Tradition ◽  
Critical Feminist ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Proper Subject

This chapter offers an overview of central issues and themes in feminist philosophical reflections on the body. It discusses at greater length three specific examples from recent debates in feminist philosophy: how concepts of sex and gender and their juxtaposition have been contested; how the phenomenological tradition has been reworked by critical feminist philosophers; and how feminist philosophers of disability challenge the reification of bodies, refocusing philosophical attention on bodies as always in process. All three debates provide complex and connected challenges to understandings of bodies as both natural and extra-cognitive, especially where these understandings imply that the body is not a proper subject for philosophy, or that the philosopher’s body is not relevant to their work.

scholarly journals CONSTRUCTION AND DECONSTRUCTION OF GENDER IN THE CONTEMPORARY HUMANITIES

2019 ◽  
pp. 5-16
Author(s):  
Olga A. Voronina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Knowledge ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Gender Perspective ◽  
Constructivist Model ◽  
And Gender

The purpose of this article is to analyze the evolution of the concept of gender in social knowledge and the humanities. The term «gender» encompasses biological (sexual), psychological, social, cultural, symbolic aspects of human life. Even before the introduction of this term into scientific publications in the 1960s, the phenomenon itself was discovered in three types of knowledge: in psychology and psychiatry when studying various forms of sexuality and sexual identity, in anthropological and ethnographic studies, and in the feminist philosophy of culture. This largely determined the main directions in the study and understanding of gender for several decades. The theory of socio-cultural construction of gender played the main role. It developed in parallel with other critical and constructivist scientific concepts, which in no small part led to its adoption by «academics» and the inclusion of the gender perspective in the body of scientific research. However, along with the development of postmodern feminist philosophy, the concept of gender undergoes redefinition. The constructivist model of gender is displaced by the performative concept of Judith Butler. She argues that not only gender but the biological sex does not exist outside the cultural framework and power discourse. The binary matrix of gender, gender identity and heterosexuality is approved within the framework of the dominant discourse with the help of various regulatory actions (performatives). Butler rejects this model because she claims that bodies, sex and gender identity have different configurations. The performative concept of sex was actively used in the queer project, as it provided justification for rejecting the normative binary concept of femininity and masculinity and the corresponding heterosexuality. Today, queer includes political movement, research, art, and discursive deconstruction of normative heterosexuality. The variant of mosaic nature, hybridity and relativism of identity proposed in the queer project destroys the possibility of social and political transformations in the sphere of gender equality. Instead, queer activists advocate an elusive equality of opportunity to try on different identities at one’s own discretion. At the present stage, the theoretical radicalism of queer makes the development of new social programs unlikely, while they appear to be necessary. In contrast, gender theory (in its feminist, constructivist, and cultural-symbolic modes) has had a significant scientific and social impact. The use of the gender perspective in social knowledge and the humanities has provided better understanding of the individual and society. The principle of achieving gender equality has been accepted by the world community and has become part of many programs at the international and national levels. However, the problems in the understanding of the relation between sex and gender, discovered in performative and queer theory, become significant against a background of spreading biotechnologies (from sex reassignment surgeries to assisted reproduction). This requires wider research and further discussion among different schools.

scholarly journals Sex and gender differences in nutrition research: considerations with the transgender and gender nonconforming population

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Whitney Linsenmeyer ◽  
Jennifer Waters
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equity ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Validity And Reliability ◽  
Nutrition Interventions ◽  
Step Method ◽  
Gender Nonconforming ◽  
Nutrition Research ◽  
Surveillance Programs ◽  
And Gender

AbstractA sex- and gender-informed approach to study design, analysis and reporting has particular relevance to the transgender and gender nonconforming population (TGNC) where sex and gender identity differ. Notable research gaps persist related to dietary intake, validity and reliability of nutrition assessment methods, and nutrition interventions with TGNC populations. This is due in part to the conflation of sex and gender into one binary category (male or female) in many nutrition surveillance programs worldwide. Adoption of the Sex and Gender Equity In Research (SAGER) guidelines and the two-step method of querying sex and gender has the potential to exponentially increase the body of research related to TGNC health.

scholarly journals Gender, gestation and ectogenesis: self-determination for pregnant people ahead of artificial wombs

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (11) ◽  
pp. 787-788
Author(s):  
Claire Horn
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
The Body ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Biological Approach ◽  
Political Perspective ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
And Gender

AbstractIn this short response, I agree with Cavaliere’s recent invitation to consider ectogenesis, the process of gestation occurring outside the body, as a political perspective and provocation to building a world in which reproductive and care labour are more justly distributed. But I argue that much of the literature Cavaliere addresses in which scholars argue that artificial wombs may produce greater gender equality has the limitation of taking a fixed, binary and biological approach to sex and gender. I argue that in taking steps toward the possibility of more just practices of caregiving and family making, we must look first not to artificial womb technologies but to addressing the ways that contemporary legal and social practices that enforce essentialising, binary ways of thinking about reproductive bodies inhibit this goal.

Sex differentiation and body fat: Local biologies and gender transgressions

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-391
Author(s):  
Petra Jonvallen
Keyword(s):  
Medical Research ◽  
Body Fat ◽  
Sex Differentiation ◽  
Modern Medicine ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The One ◽  
Local Biologies ◽  
Monitoring Devices

This article examines how sex differentiation is invoked from body fat with a focus on how various monitoring devices participate in the construction of bodies. By using the concept of ‘local biologies’, denoting the linkage of the body to place with its local physical and social conditions, it argues against the ‘one-size-fits-all’ paradigm of modern medicine and critiques the mechanistic search for regularity in medical research. By looking at medical literature on obesity and how contemporary obesity researchers and clinicians link body fat to sex, local biologies of bodies in a Swedish obesity clinic are contrasted to the universal biologies represented in medical research. The article also provides empirical examples of how fat has the potential to undermine traditional sex and gender binaries.

Expertise and Non-binary Bodies: Sex, Gender and the Case of Dutee Chand

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madeleine Pape
Keyword(s):  
Women Athletes ◽  
Athletic Performance ◽  
Female Athlete ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Biological Difference ◽  
And Gender

How do institutions respond to expert contests over epistemologies of sex and gender? In this article, I consider how epistemological ascendancy in debates over the regulation of women athletes with high testosterone is established within a legal setting. Approaching regulation as an institutional act that defines forms of embodied difference, the legitimacy of which may be called into question, I show how sexed bodies are enacted through and as part of determinations of expertise. I focus on proceedings from 2015 when the Court of Arbitration for Sport was asked to decide whether an Indian sprinter, Dutee Chand, could compete as a female athlete. Despite acknowledging that sexed bodies are unruly, the court ultimately endorsed the use of testosterone as seemingly essential to women’s athletic performance, thereby reasserting a two-category model of biological difference. The legitimacy of these regulatory efforts was established through the concurrent narrowing of expertise and the body, a process that is also revealed to be gendered.

scholarly journals Men of Parts: Masculine Embodiment and the Male Leg in Eighteenth-Century England

2015 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 797-821 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Visual Representations ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
The Body ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender

AbstractThis essay explores changes in eighteenth-century male clothing in the context of the history of sexual difference, gender roles, and masculinity. The essay contributes to a history of dress by reconstructing a range of meanings and social practices through which men's clothing was understood by its consumers. Furthermore, critically engaging with work on the “great male renunciation,” the essay argues that the public authority that accrued to men through their clothing was based not on a new image of a rational disembodied man but instead on an emphasis on the male anatomy and masculinity as intrinsically embodied. Drawing on findings from the material objects of eighteenth-century clothing, visual representations, and evidence from the archival records of male consumers, the essay adopts an interdisciplinary approach that allows historians to study sex and gender as embodied, rather than simply performed. In so doing, the essay not only treats “embodiment” as an historical category but also responds to recent shifts in the historical discipline and the wider academy towards a more corporealist approach to the body.

scholarly journals Why Individuals Respond To COVID-19 Differently: A Battle of Sexes?

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (10) ◽  
pp. 459-466
Author(s):  
Olagunju Abdulrahmon A. ◽  
Amanah Lewis-Wade
Keyword(s):  
Gene Networks ◽  
Research Area ◽  
The Body ◽  
Future Perspective ◽  
Cytokine Storm ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Clinical Indicators ◽  
Severe Infections ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Impact

Several factors including genetic variations, cytokine storm (CS), macrophage activated syndrome (MAS), and lymphopenia have been recently discovered to influence the severity of COVID-19. Many studies have exclusively studied the pathogenesis of this disease, which includes the entry of the virus into the body, multiplication and spread, the progression of tissue damage, and the production of an immune response. However, questions like what makes some people more vulnerable than others to SARS-CoV-2 - the causative agent of the coronavirus disease; the role of gene networks in determining or influencing the efficiency of infection or the severity of COVID-19 symptoms are still in the valley of obscurity. What makes some SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals extremely sensitive to the development of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) while others are asymptomatic remains to be understood. Herein, we review the impact of a genetic variant in susceptibility and severity among sex and gender disparities, the significance of this variation in cases of severity and immune responses. Furthermore, we address major characteristics in severe  COVID-19 cases, such as biochemical and homeostatic effects. For example, lymphocyte count and concentrations of inflammatory mediators within patients. Also, this paper identifies key clinical indicators of severe infections in the presence of cytokine storm and lymphopenia. Moreover, it takes into account predisposing factors that induce the severity of symptoms and underline the differences between mild and severe infections. Lastly, we explained the benefits of using bioinformatics to accelerate the progress made in COVID-19 research and future perspective in this research area.

scholarly journals Monarch’s Multiple Bodies: Implementing Body Politic Metaphor on Present-Day North American Stages

2020 ◽  
pp. 163-176
Author(s):  
Natalia Vysotska
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Passion Play ◽  
Human Psyche ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Two Bodies

The paper seeks to explore the strategies instrumental for the implementation of the body politic metaphor that had been active in Western culture since classical antiquity in the plays authored by present-day North American dramatists (Sarah Ruhl’s Passion Play, USA, 2010, and Timothy Findley’s Elizabeth Rex, Canada, 2000). Drawing upon the concept of the “king’s two bodies” (E. Plowden, E. Кantorowicz, М. Аxton, А. Мusolff, L. Montrose and other New Historicists), the author sets out to demonstrate that in S. Ruhl’s dramatic cycle the metaphor serves to indicate the inextricable links between the concepts of power, the sacred, and the theatrical, whereas Т. Findley uses it to study the ontology of sex and gender in political and theatrical contexts. It is argued that the age-old somatic metaphor conceived in the archaic layers of human psyche manifests its viable receptive potential through its efficient functioning in the early 21st century cultural artifacts.

Sex versus Gender

Sociology ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Conte
Keyword(s):  
Female Gender ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
Conceptual Distinction ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Cultural Component ◽  
Gender Paradigm

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a conceptual distinction between “sex” and “gender” arose in the clinical literature on human psychosexual development. Sex came to signify the biological or bodily component of difference, that is, male and female. Gender, on the other hand, came to signify the social or cultural component of difference, that is, masculine and feminine. This sex/gender distinction, as it is often called, was heartily embraced by many feminists of the day who sought to account for differences between the sexes as well as explain and remediate women’s second-class status in society. The establishment of gender as a distinctly “social” concept appealed to feminists because it opened up an intellectual and political space—a space beyond biological determinism—for inquiry into the causes of “male domination” and “female subordination” that were not essential, universal, or fixed. In this space, social change was possible; gender relations could be reconfigured. To that end, the sex/gender distinction became, by and large, paradigmatic in feminist thought and social science, and from it grew a burgeoning body of gender theory loosely characterized as the social construction of gender. Intersectional, post-structural, postmodern, and queer schools of thought produced new insights and advanced theory in ways that posed challenges to the viability and utility of gender as a concept as well as to the sex/gender paradigm. The ensuing debates were highly productive, ushering in a new era of social theory on the body that centered corporeality and embodiment and that sought to deconstruct binary thinking. As thinking on sex/gender evolved, the conceptual split was no longer understood as a simple separation between the biological and the social. Feminist and queer scholars problematized the distinction, reformulating it as an interlocking set of relationships: the sex/gender/sexuality system. Interdisciplinary gender scholars, including prominent feminist scientists, began theorizing the complex interrelationship between sex and gender with greater sophistication in an attempt to more firmly discredit biological determinist approaches to the study of difference based on sex, gender, or sexuality. Advancing theory, research, and praxis has not only deepened understanding about a wider variety of identities, experiences, and practices around sex, gender, and sexuality but has also won greater recognition in the early 21st century for them. This multiplicity of sexes, genders, and sexualities has brought with it unique methodological concerns in the social sciences, which represent a new frontier of research and activism in gender and sexuality studies.

scholarly journals Gender competency in public administration education

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole M Elias ◽  
Maria J D’Agostino
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
New York ◽  
Graduate Students ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
The Body ◽  
Workplace Culture ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
The Public ◽  
Survey Results ◽  
And Gender

Sex and gender are evolving identity categories with emergent public policy and administration needs. To respond to the diverse landscape of sex and gender issues in the public sector, greater competency is needed. This research will contribute to the body of work on sex and gender in public administration by asking the following questions: (a) what do graduate students in Master of Public Administration (MPA) programs know about gender competency, (b) have graduate students learned gender competency in their MPA coursework, and (c) how can gender competency in MPA education be further developed and promoted? This study provides a critical analysis of one MPA program, at John Jay College, City University of New York, to begin this line of research. Our e-survey results of a non-random sample of John Jay MPA students demonstrate that many students do not learn about gender competency through their MPA education and that gender competency skills otherwise obtained are limited. To address this, we emphasize the need for incorporating gender competency into MPA education as the first step in equipping future practitioners with skills to promote gender competency in public policy, administrative decision making, and workplace culture. We provide practical means of achieving greater gender competency in MPA curricula and programming and articulate the importance of expanding this research to other MPA programs, MPA faculty and directors, and geographic regions.

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