Chapter 4 - Bodies

Biological determinism and semiotic analysis

It is important to understand contrasting positions as to how bodies are engendered because one of the major footholds masculine ideology has within everyday consciousness is the notion that masculinity is natural, that somehow males are born this way. This everyday notion stems from one of the two primary conflicting understandings of bodies which dominate the debate. This understanding is the language of biology and evolution, which supposes that gender is an expression of sex. However, these arguments require strong biological determination of individuals and groups in complex social behaviours. Brittan writes that there is no evidence at all of this kind of strong determination.(1) The evidence that suggests otherwise in massive and involves an anthropological and historical understanding of the diversity in gender behaviour. "For instance, there are cultures and historical situations where rape is absent, or very rare, where homosexuality is a majority practice (at a given point in the life-cycle), where mothers don’t predominate in child-care, where men are not usually aggressive."(2) Connell does write that it is possible there are innate psychological differences between the sexes, "but if they exist, we can say quite confidently that they are not the basis of major social institutions."(3)

The arguments of biological determination do not appeal to empirical facts. The perspective is convincing because of its central, inspiring metaphors and similes that bodies are like machines or computers. "The body "functions", "operates" there are "mechanisms", brains are "hardwired", genes are "programmed", sex-drive or aggression are "biograms".... When a metaphor like this becomes established is pre-empts discussions and shapes the way evidence is read."(4) To illustrate the power of the metaphor it is useful to consider as an example, Catherine Waldby’s study of how AIDS discourse relies on similar metaphors. "The biomedical imagination is, as I demonstrate... a phallocentric and homosocial imagination, one which uses metaphors of the feminine to designate weakness, infectiousness, virulence, and which tries to order the world according to this principle."(5) Supposedly objective scientific studies concerning AIDS are thus gendered because of their leading metaphors.

The argument from biology is due to the basic confusion that gender is the same thing as sex. If they are, then "maleness" and "masculinity" are the same thing. However, though a man cannot be a woman or a woman a man, men and women can be feminine or masculine respectively. Being male or female is not sufficient to be masculine or feminine.(6)

The competing understanding of bodies is found in semiotic analysis where images of bodies are studied. Bodies are "read" as a landscape or neutral surface in which they are imprinted with social symbols or disciplined as in Foucault’s analyses. We can trace powerful systems of imagery through which bodies are socially defined. This approach too has its leading metaphors and similes of art rather than engineering. A body is a canvas to be painted, a surface to be sculpted etc. But with so much emphasis on the signifier, the signified tends to be lost or forgotten.(7)

These accounts understand the body as tabla rasa, resulting in the problem of measureless or excessive socialization. As noted in the last chapter, excessive socialisation would result in the complete and totalitarian socialisation of subjects. Semiotic analysis is problematic in this respect, due to its disregard for biology because we can observe virtually identical behaviours in other mammals who are not subject to socialization, but instinct. Theories relying solely on socialisation to explain fundamental human behaviours associated with gender such as sexual competitiveness, attraction and aggressiveness, are almost as problematic as a position which states that human beings must be socialized into suckling, crying, grasping and reflexing. This not to say that socialization plays no part in eliciting instincts, or frustrating their expression, nor is socialization necessarily a secondary influence in the development of personality, but it seems fairly clear that instincts play a significant propelling role in human behaviours (just as they do with every other animal).

That said, a compromise can be reached between these positions. However, it is not likely a combination of biological determinism and social determinism will be right as they are both problematic and incommensurable. Biological determinism is an argument resulting from changes that took place in the nineteenth century. As patriarchy developed into fratriarchy, the idea that God gave men their nature was replaced by evolutionary thinking. It was nature that legitimised male behaviour, male aggression, male sexuality, imbuing these innate attributes with "transcendental power which brooks no interference."(8) Notions of men’s aggressive and over-powering sexuality still have influence today because of "the myth of the autonomous and independent penis."(9) But this myth is exploded when one considers Connell’s thoughts on the problem. By asserting the agency of bodies in social processes, a body can be understood as part of a social process without reducing it to discourse, symbol or deterministic biology. A body has agency in the sense that it can rebel against certain social pressure (e.g. too much exercise in an attempt to stay fit and good-looking will damage a body) or react to social situations (e.g. sexual stimulation causes arousal). The physical performance of bodies (in sex, sport, dancing, walking, modelling etc) is not a matter of social framing around a physical event.(10)

Sexual arousal is illustrative of what Connell is getting at. The sex-drive is appealed to through the conduit of the intellect as formed by culture. That is to say, the mind culturally interprets sexual stimulus and submits it to the instincts, which then provide the chemical and physiological essentials for sex. Yet there are certain aspects of stimulation that bypass the intellect. In much the same way as a sudden surprise will generate chemical and physiological changes without the approval of intellectual interpretation, certain (controversial) physical signals of health, virility and fertility in both males and females arouse innate sexual responses directly from the instincts. What clouds investigation of the process is the feed-back loop which manifests when the intellect reflects on the subtle physical responses (including changes in brain chemistry) originally elicited by the stimulus that went undetected by the intellect in the first place. Here we ponder and react to feelings and impulses which arise for reasons unknown or controversial. More often than not, we do not even question the origin of these feelings, we merely react to them, but when we do consider them it is a cultural interpretation. Simply put, a body’s response to stimulation has a direct influence on social conduct. And social conduct has a direct influence on how bodily stimulation is understood and responded to. Bodies are both objects and agents of social practice, or as Brittan puts it: "the body can never be outside the symbolic order. At the same time, the symbolic order can never be disembodied."(11)

So the circuit goes around - bodily interaction and bodily experience (e.g. sexual acts) via socially constructed body fantasy (what bodies in a particular sub/culture should conform to, what the expectations of it are as male or female in a particular situation), back round to cultural interpretation and the construction of relationships centering on new bodily interactions. This is not simply a matter of social meanings or biological determinants imposed on bodies; though these are vital to what happens. The cultural practice calls the body into play while the biology energises the circuit. Gender is experienced and enacted within this circuit. Evidently, the penis is not autonomous, and male sexuality is not over-powering. Connell calls this circuit "body-reflex practice". Though body-reflexive practice will invariably be idiosyncratic, it will also inevitably involve the historical weight of social institutions because of the cultural influence on the individual. The result is that "particular versions of masculinity are constituted in their circuits as meaningful bodies and embodied meanings. Through body-reflexive practices, more than individual lives are formed: a social world is formed."(12)

This account of reflexivity informs our previous understanding, embodying the social reflexive process and illustrating that reflexivity occurs on many levels, subjectively as well as inter-subjectively, between subjects and institutions, in a complex circuit or spiral that unifies the cultural and the natural, to the point that they are inseparable. Coupled with Foucault’s account of bodily discipline, a richer theory of how bodies are reflexively engendered, and how the practices of power and the self interface can be postulated.

Engendering

Foucault understands the body to be the raw material of disciplinary power, the site of "micro-power".(13) The body is an important site of examination because it is the original reason for disciplining a child into a particular gender. The embodied gender of the child will structure certain hierarchies (as an agent) and in turn will be structured by certain hierarchies (as a object). When the sex of a child is verified, the process of socialising a child into a gender role begins. From the biological cue of the penis, gender ideology will guide the production of a boy via the appropriate social institutions and discourses. Before birth this process will initially be in the expectations, dreams and plans the parents have for their young child to be, then this process rapidly develops into the teaching and internalisation of cultural expectations to the born child based on its biological sex.(14)

For the male child the penis is the focal point of the experience of being engendered as masculine. It is a central part of his gender identity and important to his position in the masculinist hierarchy because "the vagina and the penis are valued (by normal people) and demanded (by abnormal people who lack them) as concrete symbols of femininity and masculinity, rather than masculinity and femininity arising automatically from the mere possession of these organs."(15) This is largely due to the notion that "sexual satisfaction serves to establish and maintain one’s gender identity."(16) The study of hermaphroditic individuals has highlighted the importance of the genitals as part of gender identity and thrown light on issues associated with eroticism. The study of hermaphroditic individuals has shown that "gender identity is established early and usually irreversibly." This is emphasised by the inflexibility of gender identity in relation to biology, which remains flexible and changeable (usually via surgical procedures) and it manipulated to conform with gender identity, not the opposite.(17) In this sense the body is manipulated not just be ideological demands, but is physically altered to fit with the internalisation of the demands through surgery, diet, cosmetics, training, appropriate clothes and ornaments or exercise.

Sandra-Lee Bartky has developed a Foucauldian examination of how female bodies are disciplined as feminine and its methodology might prove useful in examining how male bodies are disciplined as masculine. Bartky makes a three-pronged investigation into the areas in which women are primarily regulated and how this is achieved. These areas are 1. A body of certain size/general configuration. 2. Certain gestures, postures, movements. 3. Display of body as ornamented surface.(18) Here only areas one and two will be dealt with in relation to men also. It is necessary to contrast feminine disciplining with masculine disciplining to gain a fuller picture of the gender order. It is arguable that the third area of investigation for men is display of body as powerful surface, an issue I will explore below.

General configuration

The disciplinary forces that exist demand of women and men certain ideals of beauty, typically through the mass media, which is a reflection, reinforcement and sometimes innovator of the social norms and expectations of beauty people hold. Bartky notes the impossibility of these ideals, for example, fat deposits in the body are genetically determined.(19) As a result, one major outcome of these disciplinary methods is the constant and life-long distraction women are subject to, by worrying about diet, exercise and make-up; indeed these can become major concerns in life that waste time better spent and result in physical and psychological damage. In this sense, the body has become the enemy.(20) To a certain degree this is also true for men, but to what degree requires further study. There are obvious differences in the demands made between the genders though; for example, despite the emphasis on exercise, women are forbidden to be stronger than men.(21)

Interestingly, the concern with nutrition and weight for men and women has its roots in capitalist concerns. In the mid-eighteenth century "major social changes had been taking place in Britain which stimulated gluttony."(22) If the workers were fat and spending too much money on food, then their standards of living could not be improved without raising their wages. "If only workers could be persuaded to substitute cheaper food, with equal nutritional value to that of more expensive food, (capitalists) could save money and still keep their ‘labour machines’ running."(23) Excess is a typical issue when it comes to class and is a typically marker of status. "The working-class body is always read as excessive because working-class consciousness is materialised there: workers show their labour on their bodies… While prisons, schools, and hospitals are institutions that physically restrain or train the body, societal controls include clothing, cosmetics, diets and exercising. The fat, the ugly, and the badly dressed are uncontrolled and anti-social in a culture that worships thin, "buff" movie star forms; fat is ‘an offensive and resisting statement, a body blasphemy’."(24) The important of general configuration, size and fitness in certain male hierarchies cannot be over-emphasised.

Bodily space/movement

The disciplines that inform bodily space and movement make women small and deferring. They take up less space than men, sitting tense, folded, narrow and harmless.(25) Being thin is also part of taking up little space.(26) Some postures are rigorously enforced by norms and teaching, for example, a woman must never sit with her legs sprawled wide-open like a man. This is partially due to the total sexualisation of the female body which men have not been subject to.(27) This reasons for this may be found in the 19th century where "almost obsessive attention has been paid to the female body, the male body has often seemed invisible..." The result of this is that "traditional patriarchal constructions of masculinity benefit(ed) enormously by keeping the male body... out of the critical spotlight. Indeed, the mystique of the phallus is, in part, dependent on it."(28)

In recent decades however, this situation has changed, perhaps because of the money that can be made from expanding the cosmetic and health industries to include men, or changes in forms of competitiveness between men which now emphasises perceived attraction. In stark contrast to men, women are taught that they should move and sit with grace and modesty. Women must not stare and women must not stride. Disciplined deference is exposed by careful attention to the ratio of smile exchanges between men and women in conversation (men smile back much less) and touching exchanges (men touch women more). This deference is echoed in male hierarchies, where males of lower standing (say employees) are touched more, smile back more and take up less space than those higher in the hierarchy than them.(29)

The gestures and movements of men must be clearly masculine, men must be the ones to lead, usually steering and leading women, by the hand in streets, on the dance floor, out of cars etc. Men’s gestures must express strength or control. Gender-ambiguous gestures are suspicious and gestures that are considered effeminate will be sanctioned to some degree. Males who demonstrate such behaviour can be "referred to by pejorative terms... and consequently (lose) status." Adler, Kless and Adler’s study of elementary school boys contains a description of what some boys perceive as effeminate. "When he (a classmate) sits in his chair, he crosses one leg over the other and curls the toe around under his calf, so it’s double crossed, like this (shows). It looks so faggy with his ‘girly’ shoes."(30) Clearly, males are socialised at an early age to understand certain postures, gestures and the accompanying clothes, styles and ornaments as feminine or homosexual (usually the two are equated). Gestures like the limp-wrist, the mincing walk, a certain way of tossing ones hair, are all perceived as male parodies of feminine gestures and are easily spotted by the youngest children as "not masculine" and thus sanctioned as unacceptable behaviour for a real (i.e. heterosexual) man. Evidently, violation of the rules of body space and movement can result in the loss of status for both men and women. Display of body as powerful surface

Male bodies are especially important in how they appear in terms of strength and capability for violence and competition, and in display and perceived attraction. Understanding the masculine body as powerful involves synthesising the two areas above. In contrast to surgical procedures which engender hermaphrodites by removing sex ambiguity, a different form of bodily manipulation which alters the body to fit gender demands can be found in another extreme example, that of bodybuilding. Judith Roof understands the popularity of bodybuilding to be caused by a backlash to the feminist challenge to patriarchy and patriarchal symbols. Bodybuilding, recalls "a time when life was more simple, orderly and just", a time before fratriarchy, in its use of symbols and historical characteristics. Interestingly, these characteristics evoke older forms of patriarchal structures, like feudalism, and extreme forms of modern patriarchal structures like dictatorship and fascism.(31) Connell understands the connection of masculinity to fascism to be found beyond bodybuilding, writing that "in gender terms, fascism was a naked reassertion of male supremacy in societies that had been moving towards equality for women. to accomplish this, fascism promoted new images of hegemonic masculinity."(32) The connection is not just social, but psychological, as can be seen in the famous bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger’s dreams about dictatorship, power and authoritarianism.(33)

The association of bodybuilding and patriarchal order can be seen in popular visual media. Because of the visual orientation of bodybuilding, this practice of the self stands alongside other forms of visual masculinity which reinforces "the connection between patriarchy and men by association with - by being ‘next to’ perceived loci of power - government, the military, big business." Visual masculinity abounds in "sports and in the number of media-honed, overly present fathers on sitcoms and in commercials and advertisements."(34) Bodybuilding is just one kind of masculine image in association with power, control and patriotism, "linked to regressive notions of individualism, an exalted work ethic (‘no pain no gain’)" enabling "bodybuilding to rebind masculinity to metaphors of strength and power." This is seen in films like Rambo and Commando (starring two famous bodybuilders) where a powerfully built man is seen to impose order on disorder, resolving problems with physical violence.(35)

Bodybuilding is the sign of self-aggrandising work, of a man being greater, bigger, higher, of individual potential within a context of hierarchic manoeuvring, the display of potentially violent power and capitalist accruement of wealth. Self-aggrandising posturing like this takes place in many ways on the micro level of individuals in mundane activities, like playing sport or just walking down the street and measuring oneself up, ones perceived attraction, status symbols and physical strength, to other passing men. It also takes place on the macro level of brinkmanship, war, crime and trade between states. The importance of the powerful masculine body is highlighted by the sinister paradox of the modern state with its wars of mass slaughter and its accompanying interest in medicine and the healthy body.(36) It is no accident that propaganda posters encouraging men to fight for America in World War Two depicted a solider as a patriotic bodybuilder, a crusading knight and an artisan(37) or those that encouraged Germans to fight for Hitler depicted Teutonic knights or muscular, struggling Storm Troopers with the slogan "Service with the SA raises one to comradeship, toughness and strength!"(38)

That a man can be "raised" within the masculine hierarchy by being of service to the fratriarchal state or through having the potential for violence, or by working hard at self-aggrandisement (economically or physically), reveals one of the other purposes of masculine ideology; to motivate men to work and fight for the state: "so long as there are battles to be fought, wars to be won, heights to be scaled, hard work to be done, some of us will have to ‘act like men’."(39) For these reasons, the masculine body must be displayed and perceived as powerful if status within many hierarchies is to be gained and maintained. Here it is evident again that masculinity is closely tied to capitalist gain and to war.

Masculinity and surveillance

The disciplining of bodies is achieved via the "coercive link with the apparatus of production". This link is close surveillance and self-surveillance of individual bodies through various institutionalised methods.(40) Surveillance is the key technique for ensuring the ideological demands which shape a form of discipline. This means that different kinds of discipline and different kinds of masculine bodies are produced according to the requirements of a particular institution and the form of surveillance employed. Nancy Fraser identifies two types of surveillance, or "gaze". One is the "individualising" gaze, which involves exhaustive case studies and close scientific, medical and psychological examinations. With regards to masculinity, this type of surveillance is concerned with the biological underpinnings of a man’s gender and whether is it appropriate, typical and functional. Another is the unidirectional "synoptic visibility", made possible by architecture (e.g., Bentham’s Panopticon)(41) and technology (e.g. CCTV). This type of surveillance ensures that people conform to the mode of behaviour that is expected of them to avoid punishment and other forms of correction if they are aware of observation by punitive or corrective authority. For example, if one does not act like a "hard man" in a prison, one is likely to be punished in some way by the guards or the inmates because one will be seen as a target for exploitation, or an object of sadism.(42)

An extreme example of how others are watched and thus coerced to imitate violent forms of masculinity is found in the SS camps of Nazi Germany. One of the best survival methods an inmate could employ in these camps was to imitate the SS guards. "Old prisoners tended to identify with the SS not only in their goals and values, but even in appearance... They prided themselves on being tough, or tougher than the SS."(43) The SS camp is an interesting example because Foucault recognises the Nazi movement as astride the changes from pre-modern power to modern power, a "combination of the fantasies of blood and the paroxysms of power".(44)

In the case of masculine behaviour a third type of surveillance is very important because it is thoroughly saturating, falling somewhere between the others as a common experience. This is Sartre’s "look", a gaze expressing the asymmetry of personal relations and the unknown properties behind the eyes (lenses) of the looker (like the latter form of surveillance), and the individualising examination of personal assessment (similar to the former). The "look" goes some way to explain how social responses are enforced and internalised.(45) It also explains mundane forms of inter-personal posturing, sizing-up, perceived attraction and the inevitable ordering of masculine hierarchy which result from such evaluations.

The gender anxiety of a hermaphroditic child who has been raised as a boy but grows up to menstruate, or the ambitions of the bodybuilder or sportsman, are good examples of self-surveillance, which is the internalisation of the other forms of surveillance. The subject polices his/her own body, requiring it to conform to the gender identity s/he has been disciplined into, that s/he aspires to. Understood in this way, self-surveillance is evidently an integral part of the bodily reflexivity Connell describes. Thus, the notion of surveillance is an important part of the disciplinary technique and the reflexive practices of the self. In mundane, everyday institutions and social situations, imitation of masculine behaviour of those with higher status is the best way to ensure a place in masculine hierarchy.

The sciences of humanity require these modes of objectification, which are found covertly or overtly throughout all levels of society, in order to understand, classify and thus control. So this manipulation of bodies takes place on both a micro-scale (between and within subjects, which Foucault calls disciplinary) and on a macro-scale (between institutions and subjects, which Foucault calls bio-power). The ideological process of gender is found within this matrix as an institutional discourse, an everyday, social phenomenon and an internalised, embodied identity, all of which, to some degree, interact reflexively. The final piece of the gender order puzzle involves solidifying masculine conformity in opposition to those perceived as "Other".

  • (1) Britten, A. - Masculinity and Power, p83
  • (2) Connell, R. W. - Masculinities, p47
  • (3) Connell, R. W. - Gender and Power, p71
  • (4) Connell, R. W. - Masculinities, p48
  • (5) Waldby, C. - AIDS and the Body Politic, p31-32
  • (6) MacInnes, J. - The End of Masculinity, p64-66
  • (7) Connell, R. W. - Masculinities, p50-p51
  • (8) Britten, A. - Masculinity and Power, p10-11
  • (9) Britten, A. - Masculinity and Power, p11
  • (10) Connell, R. W. - Masculinities, p60
  • (11) Britten, A. - Masculinity and Power, p73
  • (12) Connell, R. W. - Masculinities, p61-p64
  • (13) Barker, P. – Michel Foucault – An Introduction, p57
  • (14) Oakley, A. - Sex, Gender and Society, p164
  • (15) Oakley, A. - Sex, Gender and Society, p162
  • (16) Oakley, A. - Sex, Gender and Society, p162
  • (17) Oakley, A. - Sex, Gender and Society, p164-165
  • (18) Bartky, S-L. - "Foucault, Feminism and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power" in Diamond, I and Quinby, L (eds.) Feminism and Foucault, p64
  • (19) Bartky, S-L. - ibid, p66
  • (20) Bartky, S-L. - "Foucault, Feminism and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power" in Diamond, I and Quinby, L (eds.) Feminism and Foucault, p65
  • (21) Bartky, S-L. - ibid, p73
  • (22) Gronow, J - The Sociology of Taste, p7
  • (23) Gronow, J - ibid. p7
  • (24) Sweeney, G. - "The King of White Trash" in Wray, M. and Newitz, A. (eds.) - White Trash - race and class in America, p255-257
  • (25) Bartky, S-L. - op cit., p67
  • (26) Bartky, S-L. - ibid, p73
  • (27) Foucault, M. - The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, p104
  • (28) Duroche, L. - "Male Perception as Social Construct" in Men, Masculinity and Social Theory ed. by Hearn, J. and Morgan, D. p172
  • (29) Bartky, S-L. - op cit., p67-68
  • (30) Adler, P. A., Kless, S. J., and Adler, P. - "Socialisation to gender Roles: Popularity among Elementary School Boys and Girls" in Sociology of Education, p174
  • (31) Roof, J. - Reproductions of Reproduction , p63-64
  • (32) Connell, R. W. - Masculinities, p193
  • (33) Roof, J. - Reproductions of Reproduction , p64
  • (34) Roof, J. - Reproductions of Reproduction , p63
  • (35) Roof, J. - Reproductions of Reproduction , p64-65
  • (36) "The Political Technology of Individuals" in Technologies of the Self p160 and Foucault Live p299
  • (37) Connell, R. W. - Masculinities, plate 6
  • (38) Snyder, L. L. - Encyclopedia of the Third Reich, p305
  • (39) Connell, R. W. - Masculinities, p33 quoting David Gilmore’s Manhood in the Making.
  • (40) Bartky S-L. - "Foucault, Feminism and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power" in Diamond, I and Quinby, L (eds.) Feminism and Foucault, p62
  • (41) Fraser, N - Critical Thought Series:2 Critical Essays on Michel Foucault, p223
  • (42) Sim, J. - "Tough than the Rest? Man in Prison" in Newburn, T. and Stanko, E. A. (eds.) - Just Boys Doing Business? Men, Masculinities and Crime, p107
  • (43) Graber, G. S. - History of the SS, p217
  • (44) Foucault, M. - The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, p149
  • (45) Sartre, J-P – Being and Nothingness p252-303

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