“Bodies cannot be understood as a neutral medium of social practice. Their materiality matters. They will do certain things and not others. Bodies are substantively in play in social practices such as sport, labour and sex,” (Connell 2005:58).
For my M.A. research, I am currently working through Raewyn Connell‘s foundational text Masculinities (2005). Most students of gender know Connell’s name and I’ve read a host of her other work (at this point, I have lost track of how many times I’ve worked through “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept” by Connell and Messerschmidt). While I’m doing my best to stay focused on text relevant to my own research, I’ve found myself excitedly getting lost in the pages today.
Connell is absolutely correct in the above quote – bodies are not a neutral medium. They do not exist in a vacuum nor are they a vacuum, void of content, themselves. Bodies are real, material things that have real consequence out of their mere physical existence. Bodies are often conceptualized as a blank canvass. I think often we forget that though a canvass may be blank, it is still physically there. To really push the metaphor – a painter’s canvass may be blank, but there is still an actual piece of canvass, wood framing, nails, and staples constituting the clean slate in front of said painter.
Connell continues:
“Social theory for the most part still operates in the universe created by Descartes, with a sharp split between knowing, reasoning mind and the mechanical, unreasoning body. Theories of discourse have not overcome this split: they have made bodies the objects of symbolic practice and power but not participants,” (Connell 2005:60-61).
This text was originally written over 20 years ago and the second edition was published in 2005, but I think this still holds true for a lot of writing focused on gender, identity, and embodiment today. This participation and activity that Connell calls for is crucial when writing about the gender and bodies.
To move past this Cartesian disjuncture, Connell calls for body-reflexive practices within the study of bodies:
“Through body-reflexive practices, bodies are addressed by social process and drawn into history, without ceasing to be bodies. They do not turn into symbols, signs or positions in discourse. Their materiality… is not erased, it continues to matter. The social process of gender includes childbirth and child care, youth and aging, the pleasures of sport and sex, labor, injury, death from AIDS,” (Connell 2005:65).
The social processes inscribed on bodies emerge when we assign gender to or activate a gendered lens on activities described above. I think that Connell’s perspective crucial to keep in the forefront when speaking social embodiment. The materiality of the body doesn’t disappear when gender (or race or other social identities) have been inscribed upon the canvass of the body. The body’s physical presence remains and it is how we can be situated into our particular socio-historical moment.
I understand why the significance of the physical body itself gets downplayed or lost completely in some research or theory – especially when discussing the bodies of transgender folks. Biology is so often understood as destiny for gendered persons in the West. One’s biology often becomes one’s prison for some people of transgender experience. When the persistence of binaries of both sex and gender continue to be the source of so much oppression, why wouldn’t you want to downplay the significance of the physical side of things? To bring attention to the thing that potentially hurts some of us the most or to something that is so often is used to justify violence or injustice faced by those deviating from social norms feels scary and perhaps disrespectful of the lived experiences of these folks.
Gender is socially constructed, but it has still been constructed within our material world and onto our physical bodies. For myself as a researcher, I take Connell’s words to heart and want to focus on how I can reflexively examine how bodies are gendered and, in turn, how gender is embodied when continuing my studies. I think that there are ways to acknowledge the physical, visceral experiences of bodies without tumbling down the gross rabbit hole of biological determinism. I also think that a continued acknowledgement of the substance of our bodies is important to avoid drifting into the other direction of pure social construction (i.e. an arena in which Butler’s work is constantly activated and often misinterpreted).
____
All writing published on jaysorensen.com © Jay Sorensen, 2018.
Jay Sorensen, Ph.D. Candidate 