The Body Essay -- Sexuality

The social and cultural conditions in which we live in today continue to perpetuate and maintain the app all culture that pervades our lives, especially for the lives of individual women. As a womens rightist thinker, Ann Cahill whole shebang to change this by challenging current definitions of rape as assault, and addressing questions of wherefore rape exists in the first place, and how we can begin the prevention process. In Cahills book, Rethinking Rape, she approaches the subject of rape by analyzing the works of contemporary feminist theorists like Judith Butler, who perceive the female organic structure as a potential site of resistance against sex-based mashion and a larger governance of sexual domination (Cahill 32). Although each is addressing very different issues in feminist theory, Cahill does draw upon some of Butlers ideas about the imitation and slaying of sex activity in Butlers essay Imitation and gender Insubordination. Cahill does this in format to further articulate her critique of the body and the office staff it athleticss in the phenomenon of rape as an embodied experience of women at the direct of the individual (Cahill 109). There are certain concepts besides the performance of gender that both Authors touch on including the body, heterosexual norms as inhibitions to attaining liberation, the family relationship between sexuality and gender, and the problematic nature of social constructs. By analyze and contrasting the works of Cahill and Butler, this paper will explore the importance and complexities of the body, the pivotal role it plays in Cahills critique of the phenomenon of rape, and how Butlers critique of coming out of the closet values the notion of gender performativity more than the notion ofthe body itself.Before de... ... feminine body so we internalize that ideal and subject ourselves to the intrusive, expensive, and high maintenance practices in order to be rendered beautiful (Cahill 155).There are a number of factors that play into the perpetuation of rape culture, the hierarchy of gender, and gender performativity. The one thing they all pee in common that is essential to understanding how men have been able to oppress us for so long and continue to oppress us. The body is the one thing that can maintain our inferiority and powerlessness, but it can also be the one thing that can idle us from the same system of oppression. Works CitedButler, Judith. Imitation and Gender Insubordination. The punt Wave A Reader in Feminist Theory. Ed. Linda Nicholson. New York Routledge, 1997. 300-15. Print.Cahill, Ann J. Rethinking Rape. Ithaca Cornell UP, 2001. Print.