TY - CHAP
T1 - Reconstructing gender to transcend shame
T2 - Embracing human functionality to enable agentic and desexualised bodies
AU - Silverio, Sergio A.
N1 - Sergio A. Silverio is an academic Psychologist and Registered Scientist of the Science Council. His primary research interest lies in the ‘Female Psychology’ branch of ‘The Psychology of Women’ and he adopts a lifecourse analysis approach, using qualitative methodologies to examine women’s mental health and social wellbeing outcomes in relation to changes in gender identity, across the lifespan. Having graduated from the University of Liverpool in 2016, his Master’s research into older never married women, later-life femininity, and ageing social networks attracted critical acclaim from his learned academy: The British Psychological Society. Since moving to the University College London in 2018, and assuming the role of Research Assistant in Qualitative Methods within the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Institute for Women’s Health, he has been able to further pursue his wider interests into women’s experiences of motherhood and bereavement. This has only supported his endeavours to bring women’s health to the forefront of academic debate, whilst continuing to strive for better provisions of psychological health and greater female empowerment.
PY - 2019/5/12
Y1 - 2019/5/12
N2 - Now more than ever, our
bodies are being used as radical tools with which we negotiate our place and
status in society. No longer is it the
case that the body is purely a functional, reproductive, machine – passing on
genetic information from one generation to the next; but rather they have
become a form of language in their own right.
Our bodies are increasingly recognised as individual emblems, each with
powerful and political meaning. In
Western Society in particular, the quest for the “eternal feminine” endures,
rendering women passive, sexualised, and objectified; without the opportunity
to subvert the shame they are forced to withstand. If women were afforded the opportunity and
social standing to overcome the pressures of living in patriarchal and
phallogocentric societies; they could instead become members of our
civilization who are the subjects,
allowed to act and experience, rather than be gazed upon, and experienced as
the objects of hegemonic,
heteronormative, and masculinist desire.
It is in this regard that we, as a society, must change the entrenched
conscious practices of sexualisation, and should expose the unconscious biases
towards women’s bodies such that women can embrace their bodies, their bodily
agency, and the multiple functions of their body (such as athleticism,
breastfeeding, childbirth, menstruation, & orgasm) rather than feeling
abject shame, which for so long has been the case. It is the aim of this
chapter to advocate the reconstruction of gender in society, allowing for an
understanding of fluid gender identity and context-specific gender construction
to permit the desexualisation of the body and the removal of body-specific
shame. It shall further argue for
society to instead favour the acceptance of the body as a multi-functional
entity, which can be sexual without
having to be sexualised.
AB - Now more than ever, our
bodies are being used as radical tools with which we negotiate our place and
status in society. No longer is it the
case that the body is purely a functional, reproductive, machine – passing on
genetic information from one generation to the next; but rather they have
become a form of language in their own right.
Our bodies are increasingly recognised as individual emblems, each with
powerful and political meaning. In
Western Society in particular, the quest for the “eternal feminine” endures,
rendering women passive, sexualised, and objectified; without the opportunity
to subvert the shame they are forced to withstand. If women were afforded the opportunity and
social standing to overcome the pressures of living in patriarchal and
phallogocentric societies; they could instead become members of our
civilization who are the subjects,
allowed to act and experience, rather than be gazed upon, and experienced as
the objects of hegemonic,
heteronormative, and masculinist desire.
It is in this regard that we, as a society, must change the entrenched
conscious practices of sexualisation, and should expose the unconscious biases
towards women’s bodies such that women can embrace their bodies, their bodily
agency, and the multiple functions of their body (such as athleticism,
breastfeeding, childbirth, menstruation, & orgasm) rather than feeling
abject shame, which for so long has been the case. It is the aim of this
chapter to advocate the reconstruction of gender in society, allowing for an
understanding of fluid gender identity and context-specific gender construction
to permit the desexualisation of the body and the removal of body-specific
shame. It shall further argue for
society to instead favour the acceptance of the body as a multi-functional
entity, which can be sexual without
having to be sexualised.
KW - Bodily Agency
KW - Femininity
KW - Gender
KW - Lifecourse Analysis
KW - Sexualisation
KW - Shame
M3 - Chapter
SN - 978-3-030-13408-2
SP - 149
EP - 165
BT - The bright side of shame
A2 - Mayer, Claude-Hélène
A2 - Vanderheiden, Elisabeth
PB - Springer
ER -