Body Politics - Papers

📄 Papers

Gender's Nature: Intersexuality, Transsexualism and the 'Sex'/'Gender' Binary

Myra J. Hird • December 1, 2000

This groundbreaking article challenges the fundamental distinction between 'sex' and 'gender' by demonstrating that 'sex' itself is a social construction. Through examining intersexuality and transsexualism as embodied experiences that disrupt binary categories, Hird reveals how medical and social institutions work to maintain artificial divisions. The paper questions whether emphasizing sexual difference or exposing sex as construction better serves feminist goals for social transformation.

Queer Theory Gender Identity Trans Feminism +2

📄 Papers

Reconceiving Citizenship: The Challenge of Mothers as Political Activists

Kerreen Reiger • December 1, 2000

An exploration of how mothers as political activists challenge traditional conceptions of citizenship. Reiger examines maternal activism in Australian childbirth reform movements, arguing that mothers' claims for participation in health policy reconceive citizenship to include care, embodiment, and community advocacy.

Feminist Theory Political Participation Ethics of Care +2

📄 Papers

Thinking Through Breasts: Writing Maternity

Alison Bartlett • August 1, 2000

A groundbreaking exploration of how maternal embodiment, particularly breastfeeding, transforms academic writing and knowledge production. Bartlett develops an 'epistemology of breasts' that challenges traditional boundaries between personal experience and scholarly practice.

Feminist Theory Body Politics Academic Feminism +2

📄 Papers

Protesting like a Girl: Embodiment, Dissent and Feminist Agency

Wendy Parkins • April 1, 2000

This 2000 article examines feminist agency through the lens of embodiment, drawing on Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology to analyze the British suffragette movement. Parkins focuses on Mary Leigh's suffragette career to argue that corporeal performance—the strategic use of women's bodies in daring protests—constituted a powerful form of feminist political agency that contested the boundaries of citizenship and the political domain.

Feminist Theory Body Politics Social Movements +2

📄 Papers

Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment Motility and Spatiality

Iris Marion Young • January 1, 1980

This groundbreaking 1980 essay analyzes the particularity of feminine bodily experience through a phenomenological lens. Young combines Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the body with de Beauvoir's existentialist feminism to explore how patriarchal society shapes women's bodily comportment, movement patterns, and spatial perception, revealing how gendered bodily experience limits women's agency and self-realization.

Phenomenological Feminism Body Politics Gender Socialization +3

📄 Papers

The Laugh of the Medusa

Hélène Cixous • January 1, 1975

Hélène Cixous's 1975 classic feminist essay introduces the important concept of 'écriture féminine' (feminine writing), calling on women to reclaim their bodies and voices through writing, and remains one of the most influential texts of French feminist theory.

Feminist Theory Literary Criticism Body Politics +2

📄 Papers

The Laugh of the Medusa

Hélène Cixous • January 1, 1975

This groundbreaking 1975 essay introduces the concept of 'écriture féminine' (feminine writing), calling for women to reclaim their bodies and desires through writing. Cixous reinterprets the myth of Medusa, transforming her from a monstrous figure into a symbol of feminine power and creativity, challenging patriarchal language systems and advocating for the revolutionary potential of women's writing.

Postmodern Feminism Feminist Literary Criticism Women's Writing +3