Foucault and Feminism: Resisting a Sexed Dichotomy (original) (raw)

This essay will contend that there is an inseparable triumvirate foundation in the construction of female bodies within contemporary society: women's bodies are constructed "naturally" as feminine; this derives from the sex category; and that this functionalises women as inherently sexualised. This will be illuminated by discussing the underpinning Foucauldian theories of power, discourse and bodily projections. Criticisms of this conception -and what it means for feminism -will be briefly dealt with, before examining and locating these forces in practice. An examination of regulative discourses and how they operate in society (constructing sex as gendered, sexualised modality) will take place; along with analysis on how this discursive regulation erects a false sexed dichotomy, and how this results in the heteronormative sexualisation of women as a category. The impact of such sexed centralised sexualisation will be elucidated upon, with reference to the constraining and debilitating results on body characteristics, geography, perceptions of self and political emancipation. This will be used to support the contention that maintenance of a naturalised, sexed dichotomy obliquely restricts a change in our social discursive context; and that it implicitly renders voiceless those outside of such binary categories. Furthermore, it will be argued that affirmation of such binary domains serve only to facilitate assumptions -and that in our current context, these assumptions are conducive to and justify covert, oppressive gender inequality and discrimination: ultimately necessitating the need for only one category -that of human.

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