Unpacking Sexual Embodiment and Embodied Resistance. In: Delamater J, Plante RF, editors. Handbook of the Sociology of Sexualities. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015. pp. 149-67. [DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-17341-2_9]

Understanding the Body and Embodiment in the Context of Women's Resistance to Intimate Partner Violence: A Scoping Review

Scholars acknowledge that women oppose male intimate partner violence (IPV). Yet there is limited comprehensive knowledge regarding how women's bodies and embodiment, that is, their physical and emotional practices and the cultural and social systems that influence them, figure in this process. Our scoping review helps fill this gap by analyzing and synthesizing 74 research articles published in English-language scholarly journals between 1994 and 2017 to address three research questions: (1) How does existing IPV research conceptualize resistance? (2) To what extent do the body and embodiment appear in this research? and (3) What common themes emerge from investigation of the role of embodiment and the body in the context of IPV? The articles identify several subtypes of resistance strategies including avoidance, help-seeking, violent action, and leaving a violent relationship. The reviewed research also regularly describes women's physical and emotional states in the context of IPV. Only a small number of these texts, however, define or conceptualize embodiment. Our analysis of the manner in which the body figures in women's resistance to IPV yielded four themes: (1) the active body, (2) the injured/constrained body, (3) the interactive body, and (4) the transformative body. We conclude with a discussion of policy and practice implications, such as the need to increase awareness about how institutions enforce embodied norms among victims and use the body to assign blame and/or proffer assistance in the context of IPV.

Sexual Disembodiment: Sexual Energy, Trauma, and the Body

This article introduces the concept of sexual disembodiment as a functional term for understanding the bodily dynamics of sexual trauma and the dissociative process that may follow. Its contribution lies in bringing an understanding of sexual health and sexual trauma into the framework of somatic psychology. It is suggested that sexual disembodiment can occur when the experience of sexuality causes distress; sexuality is then coupled with fear, dissociated to varying degrees, and suppressed from embodied awareness. While recognizing the primary role that biology and neurophysiology play in the formation of sexual identity, the authors also highlight the social construction of sexual life and suggest that oppression of nonnormative sexual identities can constrain healthy sexual expression. This article takes a holistic approach to sexual experience, combining an experiential understanding of sexual energy with a neurophysiological understanding of sexual trauma to frame a perspective on sexual disembodiment that is person-centered, socially informed, and critical of reductive tendencies within biomedical models of mental health. It is suggested that healing sexual disembodiment may be a critical step in liberating authentic sexual identity.

Pubic hair and its removal: A practice beyond the personal

Pubic hair removal, now common among women in Anglo/western cultures, has been theorised as a disciplinary practice. As many other feminine bodily practices, it is characterised by removal or alteration of aspects of women's material body (i.e., pubic hair) considered unattractive but otherwise “natural.” Emerging against this theorisation is a discourse of personal agency and choice, wherein women assert autonomy and self-mastery of their own bodies and body practices. In this paper, we use a thematic analysis to examine the interview talk about pubic hair from 11 sexually and ethnically diverse young women in New Zealand. One overarching theme – pubic hair is undesirable; its removal is desirable – encapsulates four themes we discuss in depth, which illustrate the personal, interpersonal and sociocultural influences intersecting the practice: (a) pubic hair removal is a personal choice; (b) media promote pubic hair removal; (c) friends and family influence pubic hair removal; and (d) the (imagined) intimate influences pubic hair removal. Despite minor variations among queer women, a perceived norm of genital hairlessness was compelling among the participants. Despite the articulated freedom to practise pubic hair removal, any freedom from participating in this practice appeared limited, rendering the suggestion that it is just a “choice” problematic.