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Review: Women's Bodies and Feminist SubversionsAuthor(s): Linda Gordon and Barrie Thorne
Review by: Linda Gordon and Barrie ThorneSource: Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 25, No. 3 (May, 1996), pp. 322-325Published by: American Sociological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2077442Accessed: 20-05-2015 21:07 UTC
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322 CONTEMPORARYSOCIOLOGY
thinker,
n
myview, re
nseparable
rom
is
major ontribution
s a sociologist:
o synthe-
size, provoke,
excite,
and inspire.
He
is
reliably
unorthodox nd
brilliant.
TMWS
began
a sustained hallenge
o complacent
common ense.
Wallerstein
evivedhe
Prometheanroject
of
classical sociology:
holistic analysis
n
service
of freedom.
ike Prometheus,
ho
stole fire
from
he gods
and tricked
hem,
capitalism
as created ivilization
y
stealing
and
trickinghe
forces f
nature.
As
punish-
ment rometheus
as chained o
a
mountain,
his mmortal
iver aten
ach
dayby neagle,
and each
daygrowing ack
to
be
eaten
gain.
Perhaps he
metaphorpplies o thecycles f
capitalist
ociety,
nd
perhaps
also to the
fortunes f thosewho
try
o
comprehend
t
whole.
References
Burke,Peter, d. 1972. Economy
&
Society
n
Early
Modern
Europe: Essays From Annales.
New
York:
Harper
Torchbooks.
Wallerstein,
mmanuel.
1983.
Historical
Capitalism.
London:
Verso.
.
1995.
"The end of what modernity?" heory
and Society
24/4:471-88.
Women's
Bodies
and
FeministSubversions
No previous
S review.
In its
influence
n the United
States,
Our
Bodies,
Ourselves may
be
in the same
category
s the
Bible
and Rush Limbaugh.
Since
initial ublication
n
1971,
its trajec-
tory
has been
a
rags-to-riches
dventure,
encapsulating
ome of
the dynamics
f the
women's
movement
n the late twentieth
century.
oth book
and
social
movement
hold ntension herough dgeofa critique
of
male
(and
class
and
race) power
with
pressures
o
sand it down
into a smooth
message f elf-help
nd nformed
onsumer-
ism.Moreover,
ecauseof
ts onnection
o a
social movement,
he book moves
freely
between
the
popular
and the
academic;
t
cuts
across
disciplinary
oundaries,
rawing
upon
and
nfluencing any odies
of
knowl-
edge.
The coincidence
f the
hared wenty-
fifth nniversaryf this journal and of
feminism'sest-selling
ook
affords
n
inter-
esting
pportunity
or
eflection
n theways
in
which
feminism
as influenced
ociology.
In
1969,
at
a
conference
f "Bread and
Roses,"
Boston
socialist-feminist
rganiza-
tion,
group
of women
who came together
at
a
workshop bout
frustrations
ith
physi-
LINDA GORDON
University f
Wisconsin,
Madison
BARRE THORNE
University
f California,
Berkeley
Our
Bodies,
Ourselves:
A
Book
by and
for
Women,by
The
Boston
Women's Health
Book Collective.
NewYork: imon Schuster
[1973]
1992. 647 pp. ISBN:
0-6714-6088-9.
$20.00
paper.
cians
decided to continue meeting.
One-and-
a-half years later
they produced the
first
version
of Our
Bodies,
Ourselves-
194 pages,
printed on newsprintby a small New Left
press,priced
at 75 cents. Advertised
byword
of
mouth
and
notices
in women's
and New
Leftpublications,
t had sold
250,000 copies
by 1973,
when
the
group signed
with
Simon
&
Schuster. The authors,
a collective of
11,
insisted
on provisions rare
in
commercial
publishing:
All
profits go
to the women's
health movement,
and the
publishers
are
required to
make copies available
at 40
percent of the cover price for nonprofit
health
groups. By
1995 the book
has
sold
31/2
million
copies,
not including sales of
three
sibling
books, Changing Bodies,
Changing
Lives (for
teenagers),
Ourselves and
Our
Children,
nd Ourselves
Growing
Older.
The book
is
most
famous for
its
positive
and
explicit
discussion-and
pictures-of
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CONTEMPORARY
OCIOLOGY
323
sex
and
reproduction.
he first
dition egan
with
n
introduction
n
"Women,
Medicine
and Capitalism,"
nd then turned mmedi-
ately to the most
burning opic
foryoung
feministsf
the time-sexuality.This was
followedby chapters n VD, birth ontrol,
abortion, regnancy
nd childbirth,nd
a
concluding ssay
n medical nstitutions.
he
1992 edition, 50
magazine-size
ages, riced
at $20,
beginswith a subject
possibly ven
more roublingor
women-bodyimage nd
food-
thenmoves on to alcohol
and other
drugs,
ports nd exercise,
lternative eal-
ing, sychotherapy,
nvironmentalnd occu-
pational ealth,
nd violence gainstwomen,
before turning o sex and reproductive
health.
After hildbirth,t continues
witha
long chapteron
women's aging,
nd con-
cludes
with
lengthy
ection
n
thepolitics
of
medical are.
What
makes
Our
Bodies so
influential?o
answerwe
need
to
recallhow
sexuality,
he
body,
nd
gender
werehandled
n
scholarship,
medicine,ndpopular
iscourse
n1971.There
was
virtually
o
open
discussion f
sex
and
reproduction
n
schools
r thepopular
media,
and physiciansondescended owomenand
regularly
ithheldmedical nformation
rom
their
emale
atients.
ocial
science and hu-
manities
cholarshipoutside
thesmall,mar-
ginal,
nd
suspect
field
of "sexology")
in-
cluded
neither
ex
nor
bodies;
t treated
he
maleexperience
ndperspective
suniversal.
Sociologists
ad
nograsp
f
he
oncept gen-
der"
except
for he
Parsonian
onception
f
family-based
sex
roles,"
nd
heir
ork
argely
ignored
omen
s social
ctors.
eminism
p-
pearedonly s a relicofhistory.
The influence
of
Our
Bodies,
Ourselves
is
inseparable
rom he
mpact
f the women's
liberation ovement,
he
argest
ocialmove-
ment
n the
history
f the
United
tates,
nd
one
that
till
evokes ntense esistance.
he
large ender
ap
n
grasping
he
ignificance
f
this
ook
was evident
ecently
hen
CNN
rec-
ognized
hebook's
25th nniversaryy
nter-
viewing
ts wo
eading
uthors.
he CNN
pro-
ducerreportedhatwhenshe firstroposed
the nterview
o
a
large
taff
eeting,
ll the
women
n
the
room
aid,
Great
dea ",
nd all
themen
aid,
What
s it?"
Our
Bodies'
appeal
to
women,
ike
that
f
the women's
movement s
a
whole,
ies in
the
mmediacy
nd, ometimes,
he
urgency
of
the
nformationt contains.
t can function
as a manual
n
which to look
up specific
problems, rombattering o breastfeeding,
candida
to
cunnilingus.t does not defer o
expertise; t will never tell you, as did Dr.
Spock and his colleaguesfor o manyyears:
"If n doubt, all yourdoctor." ts assumption
that readers
want this large quantity f
informations unexceptionable oday,but
onlybecause
of ts
own extraordinary
nflu-
ence.
The
book
fits
today's self-help ashion
because
it
helped
to construct hat mode.
Our Bodies
could be analyzed o show that
books
an
be what eaders
make
f hem
an
example
f
thepoststructuralistmphasis n
the indeterminacyf meaning. r, taking
social-constructionistpproach,
t
can be
understood as
a
cultural artifactwhose
significance hangesover time.More pre-
cisely,
t
tands
s
evidence hat
he
meanings
of
exts
re
powerfullyhapedby ocialethos
and social movement.
t
could
be read as
demonstrating
he
trajectory
f the second-
wave women's
liberationmovement
rom
radicalto cultural eminism,rom n insur-
gentchallenge
o institutionalized
ower
to
... eating healthyand learningto love our
bodies.But thisdeclensionmodelmisses he
dynamics
f
ocial-movementnfluence,
hich
include thetrade-offsetweenbreadth
nd
radicalism; nd it fails to appreciate the
centrality
f
feministmphasisnconnecting
structuralorceswith veryday
ife.
Our Bodies
exemplifies
eminism'subver-
sive theoretical
nfluence n
its
insistence
that
body
and
sexual norms re
politically
constructed.
oday,
ome
of
the
most
theo-
retically ophisticated cholarship ims to
integrate
he
body
nto
poststructuralist
nd
social-constructionisterspectives.
ur Bod-
ies
blazed
this rail
nd, moreover,
ssumed
thetasknot
only
f
making
his nticommon-
sense argument ut
also of
leading
nonaca-
demic
readers
through t,
which
in turn
required
standard f
proof
much
higher
than
s
customary
n academicdiscourse.
Allof
thebook'seditions
est n a
critique
ofauthoritativelyegitimatedxpertise, re-
sented
n
popular anguage
but
fundamen-
tally
identical with
the
similar
critique
presented y
scholars.
The
authors
epeat-
edly
remind s
of their
ay
status
nd of the
historically
estructiverrors
and worse)
of
medical
professionals
nd moral
uthorities.
The book continues
to devote substantial
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324
CONTEMPORARY
OCIOLOGY
attention
to
a
critique
of the political
economics
of the health, pharmaceutical,
food,
and other related industries.
Take, for
example,
the chaptersabout body
image and
food.
After feminist ultural
critique offear
of fatness, nd a crash course in nutritional
awareness,
the book discusses
the influence
the food industry
xercises over
the FDA and
USDA;
the
advertising
wars and constant
introduction
of new products
by the few
conglomeratesthat
control food
manufactur-
ing; how the dollar
spent
on food is
distributed mong
grower,packer,packager,
transporter, tc.;
how
women workers
are
treated
n
the food
industry. he authors
also
remind us repeatedly of the collective
process
of the book's production.
n typically
New
Left
ashion,
he first dition told
us how
"sisters added
their experiences, questions,
fears, eelings,
xcitement
.. We all learned
together."
The
last
edition adds
a more
theoretical take
on the process-"We
are
increasingly roud of
our
dependence
upon
one another
in a
culture
that so
prizes
independence"-but
also repeats
the person-
al
-"We
have seen one another
through
our
divorces and threemarriages, ne case ofhot
flashes and some
long
dramatic affairswith
men and women."
Just s some feminist
nd
minority
cholars
have challengeddominant
definitions f
what
counts
as
theory
and as science,
so Our
Bodies integrates
bstract, yntheticmascu-
line)
knowledge
with bodily, experiential
(female)
knowledge
thatproduces
immedi-
ate
personal
consequences.
Nowhere
is
this
integration
more
essential
than
in
medicine,
which faces the conundrumthat theprimary
evidence
of
illness is
pain,
unknowable by
the
physician.
Many professions
have
laid
claim
to
their status on
the
basis
of social-
control
agendas,
but
few have
had a
more
directly yrannical
ractice
than medicine
in
its attemptto
heal
bodies
while minimizing
the
authority
of the
body
in
question-the
patient.
For
at
least
150
years one response
to
expertise-in particularto "regular"medical
authority-has been
self-help
movements
that shade into
mysticism,
from the water
cure to Sylvester
Graham to feministmoon
therapies.
The
agenda
of Our Bodies
is
different.ts
goal
is not to deny
the
benefits
of
expertise
but
to democratize
access to it
and
insist hat ts
more
important alidity
est
is not the opinion of
professional peers but
that of "patients." t emphasizes the diversity
of bodily existence and
experience, resisting
the (social-)scientific
and medical tendency
to
create
norms
and measuredeviations from
them. In this priority, the book is not
uniquely feminist-i.e.,
forwomen-but con-
stitutesa larger democratic and libertarian
challenge to expertise.
The book uses cita-
tions to
medical and other
scholarly ournals
sparingly,directingreaders to studies they
could actually read,
and it provides carefully
selected
bibliographies
for every chapter.
The
recent editions
use humor to make
points
and
to
leaven political passion, as in a
cartoon that shows a woman on a gurney
saying o-her urgeon,
"I
hope you can justify
this
hysterectomy
to
my
women's health
group."
Of
course,
Our Bodies, Ourselves was
a
prime mover in the construction and diffu-
sion of feminism
nd
particularly
f
a
large
women's
health movement, erhaps the most
vibrant contemporary
expression
of
grass-
roots feminist ctivism.
The
National
Wom-
en's Health Networkemerged
in
1975
out of
the kind of activism the book stimulated,
includingwomen's
outrage at the dangersof
the oral
contraceptives
so
cavalierly
and
prematurely
mass-marketed in the 1960s.
The impact of this
movement has been so
large that
much of it has
become invisible
as
women's health
demands have
been
inte-
grated into
mainstreammedicine.
There are
women's
clinics
in
major hospitals
and
HMOs; childbirthpractices
have accommo-
dated
many
feminist
demands,
such as
birthing ooms,nursemidwives,aborcoaches,
family articipation
n
birth,
nd new meth-
ods of labor
and
delivery;
some
medical
schools now
produce
health
newsletters
for
women;
the inclusion
of women
in
clinical
trials
s
now
required (for
decades standard
drug trials
used
only men);
and there
has
been
a
(belated) upswing
in
research funds
for women's
diseases,
such as
breast
cancer.
The
changes
do not
affect
nly women;
the
women's health movement has been the
largest ingle pressure
for more democratic
medicine for
everyone.
Our
Bodies,
Ourselves
exemplifies
the
transformative
nfluence
of
feminism n
both
popular
and academic
knowledge.
Over the
last
25 years
the
impact
of
the
women's
movement on the
academy
has
been
in a
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CONTEMPORARY
OCIOLOGY
325
transdisciplinary
direction, and the most
challenging edges of feminist theory and
scholarship rub against
the
grain
of
disciplin-
ary
structures
and
practices. The feminist
influenceopened for cholars an array f new
topics and challenges to traditional ssump-
tions,
uch
as
the distinctionbetween public
and
private. Our
Bodies draws together and
unfolds
a
broad swathe of
the feminist
insights, .g., into the
political construction
of bodies and the
gendered
dynamics
of
institutions, which have
challenged and
enriched the
social sciences. Now
sociolo-
gists notice and think bout gender; indeed,
by
the
1990s
the
Sex
and Gender
Section,
founded in 1973, had become the largest
research section
in
the
ASA.
But the
move-
ment of
feminist deas
into
sociology has
been
uneven-widely
transformative,
ut
also
co-opted (e.g., by
the
practice
of
using
gender
as a
variable
rather
han
using
it
as a
theoretical
ategory)
and contained
ironical-
ly, by
the
institutionalizationof feminist
sociology
as
a
subfield).
In
sociology,
as in
other
disciplines,
the
majority
f male schol-
ars do not read
feminist
work,attendfeminist
sessions at
conferences,or
incorporate gen-
der
analyses
into their
teaching.
This symposium's
emphasis on "influential
books'? skewed
the evaluation
of
scholarly
significance toward books by individual
social theorists.
Because
feminist deas are in
constant interaction
with a
vibrant social
movement,
they develop
quickly,
and any
one work is
rapidly urpassed. Feminist
deas
have evolved
collectively, mixing
genres,
rather han
through he
vehicle of
individual
"theory stars."
Social theory is
a self-
conscious
genre whose
canonized
heroes -a
symbolic
source
of
egitimacy nd
coherence
in the fragmented iscipline of sociology-
are all men. And
in
sociologythere has
been a
persistent
eparation between
works labeled
"social
theory"
and works
labeled "feminist
theory."
Our
Bodies,
Ourselves
reminds us that
knowledge
is
produced not
solely
in
the
academy,
and
that some
of
the
most
produc-
tive new veins
of research and
analysis
arise
from
radical
movements.
Sociological Visions
and Revisions
Charles Lemert
and Donald
Levine
agree
about
some
important
ssues
facing
sociol-
ogy.
Both
believe
the
discipline is
in
crisis.
Both contend it s a moral crisis, nd discover
the
same
symptom:
Professional
ociologists
have
lost their concern
for the
moral
dilemmas
of
modernity.Lemert and
Levine
each locate
the
origin
and
center of the crisis
in
sociological theory. They even both
believe
that
professional sociologists
must
submit their
discipline
to a
sort of psycho-
analysis
n an
attempt
at
"recovering buried
memories and] reinterpretingast experienc-
es"
(Levine, p. 12; see Lemert,p. 205).
But here
the agreement ends. Charles
Lemert
and
Donald Levine differ on the
meaning of those buried memories and past
experiences. Consequently,
the
visions they
offer seem
dramatically opposed. Charles
ANNE
E. KANE
University f
Texas,Austin
Sociology fter
he
Crisis, y
Charles Lemert.
Boulder,CO: Westview ress.1995. 252 pp.
$55.00
cloth.
ISBN:
0-8133-2543-9. $14.95
paper.0-8133-2544-7.
Visions of the
Sociological Tradition,
by
Donald Levine.
Chicago, IL: University f
Chicago Press. 1995. 365 pp.
$47.50 cloth.
ISBN:
0-226-47546-8. $15.95 paper.
0-226-47547-6.
Lemertfindsthat the sociological tradition,
like
moderncivilization, gnores
what he sees
as the
defining
feature
of
modernity-
differences-and,
hence,
is a
tradition of
exclusion and
distortion.
He
urges
sociolo-
gists to followthe lead of those
writing rom
a
perspective
of
difference and
exclusion:
"To a very
large extent, these are the
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