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5 Sexual Bodies: On Desire and Pleasure in Feminist and Thoughts

  • Cornelia Möser

    Cornelia Möser is a researcher at the French CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique) working at the Center for political and sociological research (CRESPPA) in the work group “Gender, Work, Mobilities”. She has recently published her habilitation theories under the title “Libérations sexuelles. Une histoire féministe et queer sur la sexualité” at La Découverte and directed a collective volume on “The paradoxical right-wing sexual politics in Europe” at Palgrave Macmillan in 2022. She is currently working on feminist perspectives on and in philosophy, on ecofeminist theories in the French and German contexts as well as on new and old perspectives on feminist translation studies. She also is an associate researcher at the Berlin-based Centre Marc Bloch.
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Women and Their Body
This chapter is in the book Women and Their Body

Abstract

When feminists speak about sexuality, they sometimes refer to social and political power structure, sometimes to procreation, others speak about pleasure practices or subcultures and even others refer to questions of identity. Taking the example of the body, these disparities in feminist thought regarding sexuality become even more evident. In this chapter I would like to retrace some of the ways in which the body has been thought of in feminist theories on sexuality, discussing first the body in feminist struggles with psychoanalysis. Second, I will address the ways in which the feminist sex wars brought the topic of pleasure back into feminist views on sexuality and gender and, third, I would like to present more recent perspectives on the sexual body including the questions of race and of validity. Can we still find revolutionary potential in our sexual and desiring bodies today?

Abstract

When feminists speak about sexuality, they sometimes refer to social and political power structure, sometimes to procreation, others speak about pleasure practices or subcultures and even others refer to questions of identity. Taking the example of the body, these disparities in feminist thought regarding sexuality become even more evident. In this chapter I would like to retrace some of the ways in which the body has been thought of in feminist theories on sexuality, discussing first the body in feminist struggles with psychoanalysis. Second, I will address the ways in which the feminist sex wars brought the topic of pleasure back into feminist views on sexuality and gender and, third, I would like to present more recent perspectives on the sexual body including the questions of race and of validity. Can we still find revolutionary potential in our sexual and desiring bodies today?

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter V
  2. Table of Contents V
  3. List of Abbreviations
  4. 1 Introduction Women and Their Body: Breaking the Silence 1
  5. Part I The Feminist Perspective
  6. 2 The Panoptic Gaze: Female Body and Place 19
  7. 3 The Female Body and Freedom: Conflict of Life or Colonial Dilemma in Marko Vovchok’s Narrations? 41
  8. 4 Relative (Non-)Existence of Female-Specific Neuropathology in Current Neuroimaging Research into Hysteria/Functional Neurological Disorders 53
  9. 5 Sexual Bodies: On Desire and Pleasure in Feminist and Thoughts 79
  10. 6 Beauty and the Duty to be Beautiful 95
  11. 7 Beauty Practices and Ukrainian Women Refugees in the Context of Russia-Ukraine War: Another Double Bind 109
  12. Part II The Feminist Ethics Perspective
  13. 8 Distractibility: Wandering Between Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen 129
  14. 9 On Being ‘Indisposed’ to Study and Work, or the Discourse of the Victorian Women’s Menstruation 147
  15. 10 Female Reproductive Bodies and the Shift from Risk to Threat Society: The (Mis)Use of the Powers of Pregnancy in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Amy Ewing’s The Lone City-Series 163
  16. 11 Andrea Dworkin. Life, Death, War, and Virginity: A Radical Truth 179
  17. 12 Reproduction, Structural Injustice, and the Problem of Speaking for Others 197
  18. Part III The Phenomenological Perspective
  19. 13 Women, Bodies, and Experiences: Feminist Interventions in the Philosophy of the Body 213
  20. 14 Between Feminist Phenomenology and Socio-Structural Critique: The Hybrid Construction of Female Embodiment in the Early Theoretical Framework of Iris Marion Young as a Locus of Radical Interdisciplinarity 233
  21. 15 Confined Spatiality as Deontological Feeling: Iris Marion Young, the Embodied Sense of Entitlement and Its Varieties 251
  22. 16 Mothers Matter: Discussing Motherhood in Gender Studies and Feminist New Materialisms 269
  23. Part IV The Alternative Femininities Perspective
  24. 17 The Female Body and Leontion: Why Were Epicurean Women Capable of Philosophy? 287
  25. 18 Do Women Think with Their Body? Descartes, Malebranche, Poulain de la Barre 303
  26. 19 Arca as Demiurge: Cyborg’s Body, Mutant’s Body 321
  27. 20 The Reinvention of the Human Body: Cyborgs, String Figures and New Boundaries 339
  28. List of Contributors 339
  29. List of names
  30. List of subjects
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111396934-006

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter V
  2. Table of Contents V
  3. List of Abbreviations
  4. 1 Introduction Women and Their Body: Breaking the Silence 1
  5. Part I The Feminist Perspective
  6. 2 The Panoptic Gaze: Female Body and Place 19
  7. 3 The Female Body and Freedom: Conflict of Life or Colonial Dilemma in Marko Vovchok’s Narrations? 41
  8. 4 Relative (Non-)Existence of Female-Specific Neuropathology in Current Neuroimaging Research into Hysteria/Functional Neurological Disorders 53
  9. 5 Sexual Bodies: On Desire and Pleasure in Feminist and Thoughts 79
  10. 6 Beauty and the Duty to be Beautiful 95
  11. 7 Beauty Practices and Ukrainian Women Refugees in the Context of Russia-Ukraine War: Another Double Bind 109
  12. Part II The Feminist Ethics Perspective
  13. 8 Distractibility: Wandering Between Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen 129
  14. 9 On Being ‘Indisposed’ to Study and Work, or the Discourse of the Victorian Women’s Menstruation 147
  15. 10 Female Reproductive Bodies and the Shift from Risk to Threat Society: The (Mis)Use of the Powers of Pregnancy in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Amy Ewing’s The Lone City-Series 163
  16. 11 Andrea Dworkin. Life, Death, War, and Virginity: A Radical Truth 179
  17. 12 Reproduction, Structural Injustice, and the Problem of Speaking for Others 197
  18. Part III The Phenomenological Perspective
  19. 13 Women, Bodies, and Experiences: Feminist Interventions in the Philosophy of the Body 213
  20. 14 Between Feminist Phenomenology and Socio-Structural Critique: The Hybrid Construction of Female Embodiment in the Early Theoretical Framework of Iris Marion Young as a Locus of Radical Interdisciplinarity 233
  21. 15 Confined Spatiality as Deontological Feeling: Iris Marion Young, the Embodied Sense of Entitlement and Its Varieties 251
  22. 16 Mothers Matter: Discussing Motherhood in Gender Studies and Feminist New Materialisms 269
  23. Part IV The Alternative Femininities Perspective
  24. 17 The Female Body and Leontion: Why Were Epicurean Women Capable of Philosophy? 287
  25. 18 Do Women Think with Their Body? Descartes, Malebranche, Poulain de la Barre 303
  26. 19 Arca as Demiurge: Cyborg’s Body, Mutant’s Body 321
  27. 20 The Reinvention of the Human Body: Cyborgs, String Figures and New Boundaries 339
  28. List of Contributors 339
  29. List of names
  30. List of subjects
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