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Section 2: Feminist Ontologies

Section 2 explores feminist ontologies, or what it means to be or to exist in feminist ways. Because we do not live outside of our bodies or socially constructed ideas about embodiment, the body has been central to feminist explorations of ontology. That is, we make sense of our existence through our bodies. As such, feminists have long considered the body a generative site for analysis—it  is always already subjected to violences and trauma, but also is where we feel joy and pleasure. The body is at once a place of oppression and a site from which we can resist oppression. The essays in this section explore this paradox by highlighting the kinds of ontological questions that feminists have long asked: What, really, is a body? What does it mean to approach the body in feminist ways? How are different bodies treated differently? What affects do people’s bodies generate in others’ bodies: hatred, disgust, desire, pleasure, fear, joy? How does power move through bodies and inform our ways of being?

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Part VII: Experience

Activity 1: Cultural Objects and Affects

Bring to class a cultural object that speaks to a moment, event, or incident (that you are willing to share) in your life when your gender interacted with any athletic activity. This may include participating in or watching sport(s). How does this object speak to or disrupt ideas, assumptions, and/or discourses about a) male athletes/men’s sports and b) women athletes/women’s sports? Why should we embrace or disrupt these particular ideas, assumptions, or discourses? How do these ideas impact how trans folks are viewed when they participate in sports? What affects are wrapped up with your particular object? What cultural work does it do?

Activity 2: Podcast

Burn It All Down Podcast. Interview: Katrina Karkazis and Michele Krech on Gender Binaries in Sport. September 17, 2020
https://www.burnitalldownpod.com/episodes/interview-katrina-karkazis-and-michele-krech-on-gender-binaries-in-sport?rq=katrina%20karkazis

Discussion Questions

  1. According to Karkazis, what is the rationale that sports governing bodies use for people assigned female at birth to lower their testosterone? What assumptions about women’s athleticism are embedded in these regulations?
  2. What assumptions about women’s athleticism are embedded in regulations that require trans women to reduce their testosterone?
  3. If trans and cis women are required to reduce their testosterone in many elite sports, are the ideas and assumptions about women’s athleticism that shape these regulations the same? Different?

Reflection Questions for Readings in Part VII

Chapter 27. Anna M. Moncada Storti, “press, release, return: Edging Towards the Subject, or Filipinx Feminist Form in Three Parts”

  1. The author claims that feminist scholars, including Mani and Scott, have pushed against the traditions of Western epistemology, which prioritizes social scientific models of reason, objectivity, and evidence. In what ways do the methods of press/release/return directly counteract Western forms of knowing, and what are the potential advantages or risks, if any, of these approaches to experience?
  2. This chapter differentiates between two modes of engaging in experience: while some seek to articulate the differences across experiences of race, gender, sexuality, class, disability and so forth, others are concerned with studying the global forces that create them. Compare and contrast each approach and consider the following questions. What types of research focus on the former or the latter? Can you locate an example of a cultural or scholarly text that attempts either to do both or that blurs the line between the two approaches?
  3. Throughout the chapter, the author references Julietta Singh’s notions of “the body-self” and “history’s traces.” Considering your own connections to systems of power like colonialism and imperialism, how do the methods of press/release/return help you contextualize your relations to violence, intimacy, ecology, and liberation?
  4. The three methods of press/release/return challenge empirical forms of reason and evidence, demonstrating the importance of jettisoning from the impulse to know and moving towards the willingness to un-know. What exactly do these three methods help us un-know or un-learn?
  5. Given how the chapter concludes—with the author writing, “I look forward to others”— what are additional methods of edging towards the subject for which experience is meant to explain?

Chapter 28. CJ Jones, “Experience-as-Expertise: Cis Women Athletes and Anti-Trans Sentiment”

  1. On micro to macro scales, how do sports produce gendered differences?
  2. Why are athletes’ experiences in sport important to consider when making policy, drafting legislation, and/or creating education budgets? In what ways might sole reliance on these experiences limit an expansive vision of whose bodies can participate in sports?
  3. Sport, by definition, is a highly physical and embodied mode of activity. Compared to other realms of cultural production, how is sport unique in its focus on the body? How is it similar to other modes of activity?
  4. The author offers historical examples of how women’s bodies are policed in sports, including current calls for trans women to be prohibited from playing women’s sports. What does this convey about how the “woman athlete” or “women’s sports” are viewed?

Materials developed and curated by CJ Jones

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Part VIII: Identity

Lesson Plan for 75-minute class

Introductory Activity
Duration: 20 minutes

  1. Write “What are identity politics and why should we support/oppose them?” on the board. Under this question, create two sections: “Political Left” and “Political Right”
  2. Students break into small groups and write down their answers (2 minutes)
  3. Students watch the following clips, which offer perspectives on identity politics and also suggest linkages between identity politics and social justice movements:
  4. Move immediately to small group discussions so that students can put into conversation the material from the clips and chapters in Part VIII.

Small Group Discussion
Duration: 10 minutes

  1. Ask students to reflect on how the chapters in Part VII complicate, run counter to, or help us to think differently about understandings of identity and identity politics that have become commonsensical on the political left and the political right. Please reflect on how the clips we just watched are helpful for thinking through the nuances of the author’s argument as well as how the text is helpful for examining the clip. Students should articulate the authors’ main arguments, the evidence they use to support their arguments, the intellectual intervention of their argument, and any remaining questions students have.
  2. Break students into the appropriate number of small groups so that there are 3-4 people per group. Write all four of today’s authors’ names on the board:

“Cathy Cohen,” “Judith Butler,” “Jae Basiliere,” “Victor Ultra Omni”

  1. Students should then write their responses to the above questions on the board.

Full Class Discussion
Duration: 45 minutes

  1. Spend 8-9 minutes discussing the nuances of each chapter (or if you assign fewer than all 4 texts, you can spend more time discussing each text)
  2. Save the last 10 minutes or so for questions or ideas that cut across chapters.

Reflection Questions for Readings in Part VIII

Chapter 31. Jae Basiliere, “Performative Disruption: The Lesbian Avengers Civil Rights Organizing Project and the Threat of Rural Homophobia”

  1. The Lesbian Avengers talk about the challenge of confronting the public perception that rural places are inherently more backwards, violent, or homophobic. Do you think these beliefs about rural spaces still exist? Why or why not?
  2. Cathy Cohen cautions us against using identity politics in a way that flattens power dynamics into a simple equation where queers are always oppressed and heterosexuals are always oppressors. Do you think the Lesbian Avengers do a good job of addressing her concerns? Why or why not?
  3. The word dyke has a complicated history, in that it has been used by people perpetuating homophobic violence and also reclaimed by queer activists. What do you think about the Avengers’ use of dyke as an organizing category? Do you think that language has the same impact today as it did in the 1990s?
  4. Can you identify contemporary examples of activist groups using performative resistance to challenge harmful legislation? How are their strategies similar to, or different from, the strategies used by the Lesbian Avengers?

Chapter 32. Ultra Omni, “Identity Politics and Queer Theory’s Welfare Genealogies”

  1. What are some of the major differences between early queer theory and early Black lesbian feminism? How would you describe the relationship between Black lesbian analytics and queer of color critique?
  2. Compare and contrast Butler’s and Cohen’s understanding of identity.
  3. What groups are positioned similarly to punks, bulldaggers, and welfare queens in today’s society?

Materials developed and curated by Carly Thomsen

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Part IX: Intersectionality

Lesson Plan for 75 minute class

Introductory Activity
Duration: 20 minutes

  1. Write “What is Intersectionality” on the board. Under this question, create two sections: “According to conservatives” / “According to pop feminism”
  2. Students break into small groups and write down their answers (3 minutes)
  3. Students watch the following clip, which was made by Tate Serletti for a symposium on intersectionality at Middlebury College coordinated by Dr. Carly Thomsen and Dr. J Finley (5 minutes):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=NeyW9pP-Jyk
  4. After watching the clip, students should get back into their small groups to reflect on how the clip can help them expand upon or edit their previous responses (5 minutes)
  5. Students write their responses on the board (2 minutes)
  6. Discuss their responses (5 minutes)

Small Group Discussion
Duration: 10 minutes

  1. Ask students to reflect on how the chapters in Part IX complicate or run counter to or help us to think differently about both conservatives’ and pop feminists’ understandings of intersectionality.
  2. Create four sections on the board.

    3. “Jennifer Nash”
    “Kimberle Crenshaw”
    “Laura Harrison”
    “Vivian May”

  3. Students should articulate the authors’ main arguments, the evidence they use to support their arguments, the intellectual intervention of their argument, and any remaining questions students have. Students should then write their responses on the board. (10 minutes)

Full Class Discussion
Duration: 45 minutes

  1. Spend 8-9 minutes discussing the nuances of each chapter in Part IX (or if you assign fewer than all 4 texts, you can spend more time discussing each text)
  2. Save the last 10 minutes or so for questions or ideas that cut across texts.

Reflection Questions for Readings in Part IX

Chapter 35. Laura Harrison, “Sleeping Babies, Technology, and the Construction of Risk”

  1. In “Rethinking Intersectionality” Nash warns that intersectionality, in practice, is often treated like a cumulative equation (in other words, marginalized race + gender + class = oppression). Infant mortality rates, however, reflect power imbalances in social institutions and structures. Can intersectionality be a useful tool for understanding this problem?
  2. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines health disparities as “preventable differences in the burden of disease, injury, violence, or in opportunities to achieve optimal health experienced by socially disadvantaged racial, ethnic, and other population groups, and communities.” What is another health condition (besides infant sleep safety) in which the intersectionality of individuals and their identities and systems of power would create health disparities?
  3. Why do you think biometric technologies like the Smart/Dream Sock are so appealing to parents, even if they cannot actually prevent sleep-related death? If you were or are a parent, would you or do you use these types of technologies? Why or why not?
  4.  How might anxiety about infant sleep be gendered as the greater responsibility of mothers or fathers?

Chapter 36. Vivian May, “Reading at the Nexus of Neglect and Fetishization: The ‘Occult’ of Intersectionality”

  1. The term intersectionality circulates so widely. How have you seen this term used in pop culture and on social media? How would you draw from May’s essay to respond to these uses?
  2. Vivian May outlines the benefits and limits of both “rooting” intersectionality in and “unmooring” it from Black feminism. What does she say?
  3. Vivian May notes that she and Jennifer Nash “have approached intersectionality differently.” Draw from Nash’s text to explain what May means.

Materials developed and curated by Carly Thomsen

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Part X: Reproductive Justice

Activity 1: Trans and Queer-affirming Vaginismus Narratives

Since the late 1990s and early 2000s, cisgender straight women have dominated the discussion around vaginismus in personal narratives on websites, chatrooms, and blogs. This trend continues into the 2020s. However, there are queer and trans writers who’ve published interviews and personal narratives about their experiences with vaginismus too.

Read the following short texts:

  1. A personal essay by Sebastian Zulch, “How My Trans Identity Complicates my Vaginismus”
  2. A personal narrative essay by Asia Calcagno, “Vaginismus Taught Me That My Body is Carrying Too Much of Other Peoples’ Expectations” https://blackfemme.co/vaginismus-taught-me-that-my-body-is-carrying-too-much-of-other-peoples-expectations/
  3. A personal narrative essay by Jamie-Lee Alexander, “Beyond the Barrier of Penetration: How Vaginismus Led Me to a More Adventurous Sex Life” https://www.heroica.co/sex-relationships/beyond-the-barrier-of-penetration-how-vaginismus-led-me-to-a-more-adventurous-sex-life

Small group work
Duration 20 minutes
Materials: Provide each group with a large sheet of paper or segment of a classroom chalkboard/whiteboard.

  1. Instruct each group to create a visual representation (eg. mind-map, diagram, illustration, etc.) that depicts the intersections of gender, sexuality, and health that emerge in the Part 10 readings. Encourage the group to select key quotes from the texts to incorporate. (10 minutes)
  2. Gallery Walk. Once the visual representations are complete, provide students with a sticker, post-it note, or marker. Ask each student to circulate around the room and place their sticker, post-it note, or a large dot next to the most provocative or resonant items/quotes within the visual representations. (10 minutes)

Closing and debrief
Duration 20 minutes

  1. Students may not feel comfortable claiming and explaining their own markings so the professor could take note of the most stickered/noted/dotted parts of the visual representations and share that with the class. To synthesize, the professor can ask the following questions to get the class talking and thinking about the themes and connections:
    1. What are the common themes or experiences portrayed in the readings?
    2. How did the author’s gender identity or sexuality impact their experience with vaginismus?
    3. In what ways did societal expectations, norms, or values impact the author’s perception of their body and sexuality?
    4. What do these personal narratives share with Chapter 40, “‘To Claim My Own Body’: Vaginismus as a Reproductive, Feminist, and Disability Justice Issue”? What do these personal narratives add that is unique or different?

Activity 2: Feminist Imagery, Medical History, & Memorial Culture

Pre-activity
Look at the images of Michelle Browder’s Mothers of Gynecology, which was unveiled in 2021: https://www.anarchalucybetsey.org/
The image captures the unveiling of the Mothers of Gynecology Statue and Park in Montgomery, Alabama. The location is within a couple miles of a concrete and bronze monument dedicated to Dr. James Marion Sims, located on the grounds of the Alabama capitol building.

Activity and Discussion
Do some online research about the 2018 removal of the Sims statue in New York. The removal followed a decade of community activism in Harlem by various organizations, including the East Harlem Preservation Inc. Committee to Empower Voices for Healing and Equity. What do you think should happen to these kinds of monuments? What do you think about the creation of the Mothers of Gynecology Statue and Park? What’s the significance of art and memorial culture in disrupting dominant narratives?

Activity or Assignment 3: Curating Material Culture

  1.  Check out The More Up Campus non-profit in Montgomery, Alabama, which has devised a plan to create a Mothers of Gynecology Health and Wellness Museum & Clinic. Visit anarchalucybetsey.org to learn about their grassroots efforts. 
  2. Using a free trial on Omeka.net, create your own interactive digital exhibit dedicated to Anarcha, Lucy, Betsey, and the unnamed others.
  3. Present your work to your classmates, including your choices for honoring their lives, as well as their cultural and medical legacies. Please also reflect on the value of centering marginalized perspectives in doing feminist health humanities work.

Activity or Assignment 4: Highlighting & Amplifying Grassroots Organizations

  1. Take a look at this list of relevant reproductive justice and feminist health websites.
  2. Find an additional website for a grassroots organization working in this area.
  3. Prepare to share and present what you learned about this organization. What issues does this organization address? How do they do so in ways that are similar to or different from the other groups on this list? What makes their approach feminist? How can we support and/or amplify their work?

Activity or Assignment 5: Designing for the Movement

After completing Part X of the textbook, think about how you might use design and aesthetics to advance the movement. Look up examples that convey movement messages effectively through aesthetic choices. You might consider looking at social media or at program books for activist summits. This program book from the CTSC of Northern Ohio’s Black Maternal Health Equity Summit, held in Cleveland, Ohio in April 2024 could be one example. It also includes a “Roadmap to Impact” worksheet, which can be useful for thinking about what makes activist work impactful and the place of aesthetics and design in that impact. (See page 16 of the booklet, or view here: https://case.edu/medicine/ctsc/sites/default/files/2024-03/Road-Map-to-Impact_pilot_8.22.pdf.)

Activity or Assignment 6: Charlotte Bunch and Andrea Dworkin

Charlotte Bunch and Andrea Dwokin are provocative feminist figures who critique the heteropatriarchal centrality of intercourse in straight women’s lives. Revisit Bunch’s 1972 essay “Lesbians in Revolt” and selections of Andrea Dworkin’s 1987 book Intercourse with Vulvar Pain Disorders in mind. What pieces of their arguments remain relevant? What should be radically revised or even thrown out?

Activity or Assignment 7: TV Time

View select episodes of Sex Education (S2, E08), Masters of Sex (S2, E09) and Orthodox (S01, E03). Each show is set in a different time period reflecting various cultural attitudes towards sex. How do these episodes depict sexual intercourse? What underlying messages do the texts convey about sexual intercourse and heterosexuality?

Activity or Assignment 8: Braving the Web

Search “vaginismus” on the web. What are the top five hits you find? Quickly look at those sites. What kind of website is it? Who is the author and what are their credentials to write this material? What kind of language is used to describe vulvar pain? Now turn to a social media platform of your choosing. When you search for “vaginismus,” what comes up? Does the framing on social media differ from the framing noticed during your web search?

Activity or Assignment 9: Sex Talk

Gather people you trust for an honest conversation about sexuality and penetration. You might ask questions such as: To what degree does penetration (being penetrated or penetrating another person) play a role in your sexual behavior? Have you ever experienced pain with penetration? How do you or your sexual partners make sense of the pain? Is vulvar pain something to be fixed, avoided, endured, etc? If you talk to straight cisgender women, notice if they engage the “sex work” that Thea Cacchioni describes in her writing. Does vulvar pain shape (or interfere) with a woman’s sense of her gendered and sexualized self? Answer these questions by creating some type of cultural text to share with your classmates.

Related Media/Cultural Texts

Documentaries

  1. At Your Cervix is a documentary film about medical exams without consent and gynecological/obstetrical violence https://www.atyourcervixmovie.com/
  2. Remembering Anarcha is a documentary film written and directed by Michelle Browder to commemorate the lives and legacies of the non-consensual experiences of the foremothers of gynecology. https://rememberinganarcha.com/

Videos

  1. This is a brief 8 minute profile of Michelle Browder, artist and Executive Director of grassroots community organization The More Up Campus, located in Montgomery, Alabama. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9l3Ptx4DpY
  2. This is a 10 minute animated film that depicts the writer’s struggle with vaginismus. “What It’s Like to Not be Able to Have Sex,” Director: Shelby Hadden, Producer: Sebastian Bisbal, 10 minutes https://youtu.be/7laSF4QM6SY?si=_bGPRcqnpNgDB9lk *Content warning for vaginismus pain with tampons, gynecological exam, and attempt at penis-in-vagina penetrative sex.

Influencer of Interest

Dr. Janelle Howell is a Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy specialist. Howell educates the public about vaginal and vulvar pain as well as pelvic floor issues by centering pleasure justice. While much of her content paves the way for heterosexual intimacy with a partner and overall sexual satisfaction, and thus may be less interesting to queer and/or asexual readers, she usefully debunks harmful and incorrect/outdated information about these conditions. Lastly, Howell uses melanated molds of vulvas and penises in her teaching materials, demonstrating her commitment to Black women’s health. This is a crucial shift away from the overbearing whiteness of vaginismus websites. Her Instagram handle is @vaginarehabdoctor.
https://www.instagram.com/vaginarehabdoctor/

Supplementary Media Text

This is an interview with a New York City-based obstetrician/gynecologist named Dr. Pavan Ananth who sees LGBTQ2S+ patients with vaginismus. “Decoding Vaginismus” https://xtramagazine.com/health/decoding-vaginismus-193199

Relevant Image

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/515498935/seconds-sale-our-pain-is-real-panties

This enamel pin was designed by Claire de Louraille + Lara Parker in honor of Endometriosis Awareness Month. The pin was sold on Etsy for $9; of each sold, $3 went to the Endometriosis Foundation of America. Even though this pain was designed for endometriosis, it is an artifact that speaks to legitimizing vaginismus as a pain issue too. The pin works against medical gaslighting and interpersonal downplaying that tells us vaginal pain is “all in our head” or a psychological block.

Reflection Questions for Readings in Part X

Chapter 39. Rachel Dudley, “Intersectional Feminism & the Health Humanities”

  1. Revisit the bulleted themes. Which theme resonates with you the most and why? How do the works of Audre Lorde & Loretta Ross and Ricki Solinger inform your response?
  2. What does it mean to examine health and illness from socio-historical, cultural, and institutional perspectives? Further, why might this be important in health professions training? 
  3. What does “the social determinants of health” mean? Using a feminist approach, can you identify a book, film, song, poem, documentary, image or other kind of cultural text that illustrates the social determinants of health? Can you explain your example and your reasons for choosing it?
  4. In examining narratives regarding the development of modern gynecology in the U.S., how do you think feminist and health humanities approaches have helped us move toward truth and reconciliation? What is the place of dedications or statues in this work? Conduct some online research using the resources mentioned in this chapter. What’s your favorite cultural dedication to “the foremothers of American gynecology” and why?

Chapter 40. Jennifer Musial, “‘To Claim My Own Body’: Vaginismus as a Reproductive, Feminist, and Disability Justice Issue”

  1. How does thinking with and about pain illuminate broader societal ideas about gender? What are these ideas?
  2. Is there something specific about vaginal, vulvar, or pelvic pain that is helpful for articulating gendered ideologies? Does this type of pain differ from other bodily pain?
  3. What would it mean to think about embodiment in feminist ways? How does Musial’s text help us to do so?

Materials developed and curated by Jennifer Musial and Rachel Dudley