(FEM1d) Feminist Sociology IV: Feminist Critiques of Mothering and the Feminine

This session brings together papers which centralize women’s experiences and perspectives as they encounter, negotiate, and refuse intersecting normative dimensions of gender, race, mothering, and the feminine, and which work to position women as ‘other’, ‘deficient’ and ‘abnormal.’ Tags: Equality and Inequality, Feminism

Organizers: Sonia D'Angelo, York University, Linda Christiansen-Ruffman, Saint Mary’s University, Ronnie Joy Leah, Athabasca University; Chairs: Ronnie Joy Leah, Athabasca University, Sonia D'Angelo, York University

Presentations

Rachel Berman, Toronto Metropolitan University; Aruschga Mohantharajah, Toronto Metropolitan University; Janelle Brady, Toronto Metropolitan University; Georgiana Mathurin, Toronto Metropolitan University

Honouring Black Refusals through a Black Feminist Lens: The Lived Experiences and Counterstories of Black Mothers of Children in Childcare

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Canada as elsewhere, is a highly gendered field. This includes both the educators teaching in pre-service ECEC programs along with the undervalued and underpaid practitioners who work directly with children and families. This is also a field that remains dominated by Euro-Western psychological developmentalist approaches, approaches that take up and reinforce biological determinist discourses of gender and negate context and politics (Burman,1994; Davies, Karmiris and Berman, 2022). Reconceptualist ECEC scholarship, which began in the late 1980s and remains on the margins of the field, critiques the dominant paradigm of developmentalism in ECEC and makes use of ideas from various frameworks more in keeping with sociological thinking, such as Queer Theory and Critical Race Theory (Berman and Abawi, 2019). In particular, feminist reconceptualist scholars have taken up frameworks such as the feminist ethics of care (Richardson and Langford, 2022), and feminist post-structuralism, post-humanism, and new materialism in efforts to re-think gender in ECEC (Osgoode and Robinson, 2017). A small number of ECEC scholars have also begun to engage with Black feminist thought, inspired in particular by the foundational work of feminist sociologist Patricia Hill Collins (1986, 2008). Black feminisms can challenge dominant ways of knowing and being in pre-service ECEC institutions and in work with Black children and families (Brady, 2022; Nxumalo and Cedillo, 2017; Pérez, 2017; Pérez et al., 2016). They can also challenge wider systems of oppression (Pérez, 2017). This is especially crucial given the dominant colour-blind approach (claims not to see race or racism) (Berman et al, 2017) and the anti-Black racism that exists in ECEC in Canada (Kissi and Ewan, 2023). Indeed, Pérez (2017) argues that Black feminist thought is “essential to the field” of ECEC (p.49). Black feminisms have three key tenets: self-definition articulated and defined by Black women (Collins, 2008; Sojourner Truth, 1851); the concept of intersectionality, i.e., analysis of power at the intersection of race, gender, class, sexuality, migration status, ability, etc. (Collins and Bilge, 2016; Crenshaw, 1989); and elements of othermothering, i.e., community-based care moving beyond the individual nuclear family (Collins, 2008; hooks, 2015; Wane, 2000). This proposed presentation is part of a larger study, Honouring Black Refusals, which seeks to gather the lived experiences and counterstories of Black ECEs, Black Elders, and Black Mothers. In this presentation, we think with Black Feminisms as we discuss the ways five Black-identified mothers in a focus group held in the GTA in the spring of 2023 framed their experiences and their child’s experiences in their child care setting. Some overarching themes include: 1) the mothers’ refusal of the pathologization of themselves and/or their children in ECEC settings; 2) the mothers’ descriptions of the othermothering of racialized ECEs in connection to their children; and 3) the system navigation strategies the mothers undertook when they/their children/other children faced anti-Black racism, along with ableism, misogynoir, and/or discrimination based on migration status. Some recommendations based on the mothers’ observations and ideas for change will be made.

Samadrita Chowdhuri, University of Alberta

Understanding disorder, the female body and femininity: A qualitative exploration of the experiences of Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome treatment

Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) is a condition characterized by different symptoms of menstrual abnormalities, overweight and obesity, acne, hair loss, and hirsutism (male hair growth pattern), based on the key feature of an increase in androgen synthesis by the ovaries (Ehrmann, 2005). PCOS, by its very nature, has a negative impact on a woman’s reproductive health and is a condition that has been stated to be incurable and treatments are mostly directed at masking the symptoms and regulating hormonal functionality. Most treatments focus on taking birth control pills aimed at inducing artificial hormones to mask symptoms that manifest the dominance of male hormones, since this is the most frequent endocrinopathy among premenopausal women and the major cause of infertility (Vrbikova,2012). Women with PCOS are reduced to having an abnormal body that needs to be addressed medically because they are unable to embody normative femininity. This research seeks to understand Indian and Indo-Canadian women’s perspective of PCOS, their illness experience, and how such experiences are connected to their perceptions of femininity. This qualitative study is informed by a narrative inquiry approach, combined with aspects of feminist methodology where personal narratives were utilized to comprehend the experience of a health condition. It seeks to understand how PCOS is labeled as a condition based on the assumption that androgen excess is not part of embodied ‘femininity’ and how the sex or gender binary is shaping medical diagnosis and treatment for this condition. I present preliminary findings from my ongoing Master’s research project, which is driven by the question of how this condition is constructed as a problem of femininity under the label of a health concern. This research aims to uncover nuanced knowledge of the experiences of Indian and Indo-Canadian women by examining how women identify their bodies in response to living with gendered disease. Based on previous research on women’s experiences of PCOS, this work explores how PCOS is experienced in relation to perceptions of the normative female body. The theoretical structure of this study is influenced by a feminist and social constructionist framework focused on gender and bodies. Theories of stigma and gendered social construction are central frameworks for the study. Specifically, I use Goffman’s concept of stigma, which considers how social expectations, standards of conduct, and appearance are attached to bodies in a static manner, and how stigmatization develops in accordance with such societal expectations (Goffman,1959). I also use Butlers ideas of cultural intelligibility as a guiding conceptual framework to reflect how women negotiate their gender identities as a part of the stigma management process, and how treatment becomes as avenue to conform to femininity norms. I also utilize Foucault’s concept of medicalization to understand how medical discourses control women’s bodies, and to understand how women manage stigma. The key insights gained from the first stage of analysis reflect two sets of narratives. One, women reflected on how the condition and treatments make them feel ‘’less of a woman’’; Two, women described how the masking of symptoms enhanced their identity as a woman. Both narratives converged under the idea that being healthy meant being feminine. Temporality also becomes important as women choose their treatment preferences based on what becomes important ‘now’ and what is ‘visible’ to others. Thus, the spectrum of symptoms and their perceptions of illness, are connected with temporality, meanings of femininity, and infertility. Birth control is then not a choice, but the only option to ‘fix’ the appearance-based symptoms and to regulate menstrual cycles so that they may function like ‘normal’ women.

Estefania Reyes, Western University

Unleashing menstrual blood: A qualitative study of free-bleeding activism on Instagram

A diverse range of menstrual activism with different approaches and goals has challenged longstanding menstrual inequalities built around menstruation in the last decades. Within this landscape, the free-bleeding movement, one of its most radical branches, has flourished to transgress normative mandates and show its potential to allow bleeders to resignify and reappropriate menstruation on their own terms. However, little scholarship has been dedicated to theorizing the mediation of menstrual blood and its potential as a tool for activism. Therefore, from a poststructuralist feminist perspective, this research explored 1) how free-bleeding activists used menstruation on Instagram to challenge normative representations about menstruation and gendered bodies and 2) How the comments posted in response to the display of menstrual blood on Instagram suggest public discourses about menstruation and gendered bodies are in flux? Through the lens of six menstruators, Rupi Kaur, Kiran Gandhi, Cass Clemmer, Steph Góngora, Laia Manzanares and Lauren Archer, I closely examined texts and visuals of one of their posts and employed critical discourse analysis (CDA) and semiotic analysis as approaches to answer the research questions. By using these methods, I underscore the significance of language (CDA), signs and symbols (semiotic analysis) as instrumental tools for upholding ideological control over non-normative bodies within an overarching system perpetuating hegemonic and gendered power dynamics. The findings showed four main conclusions: Firstly, menstrual blood can blur the dichotomous boundaries of the public/private distinction by permeating through them, literally and symbolically. Secondly, in a culture where menstrual concealment is the norm, free-bleeder bodies become subversive bodies that act outside patriarchal and neoliberalist discourses and reveal the nuances of bleeding while embodying particular challenges, privileges and conditions. Thirdly, free-bleeders set the stage to expose a wide range of normative, non-normative and paradoxical standpoints concerning menstruation that give an idea about what are the central debates and narratives shaping the experiences of menstruators nowadays in the Western context. Menstruators are not only fighting the stigmas, negative attitudes and control mechanisms over gendered bodies, but they are also challenging essentialist and reductionist notions about bodies and genders, giving space to a diverse range of embodying identities. Finally, the results confirmed the potential of menstruation as a means to build more critical views about identities and gender, inequalities, and embodying practices towards activism and resistance. Merely discussing menstruation in the public sphere falls short of constructing new, boundary-pushing, and collaborative discourses that carve out spaces for a more extensive and diverse spectrum of embodied realities. To truly normalize the experiences of menstrual bodies and counteract the sanitized narratives perpetuated by profit-driven corporations that thrive on concealment and shame, menstruation must be conveyed through all the senses, with a particular emphasis on visibility—both symbolically and explicitly. In this context, free-bleeding activism emerges as a potent and viable form of resistance against the established social norms around menstruation and its oppressive cultural constructs. Engaging in seemingly individual acts of resistance through free-bleeding can potentially catalyze a broader movement toward social justice.