Nadja Durbach
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520257689
- eISBN:
- 9780520944893
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520257689.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
At the same moment that “the Elephant Man” was admitted to the London Hospital in the summer of 1886, “Lalloo the Double-Bodied Hindoo Boy” began to exhibit himself across the United Kingdom. Lalloo ...
More
At the same moment that “the Elephant Man” was admitted to the London Hospital in the summer of 1886, “Lalloo the Double-Bodied Hindoo Boy” began to exhibit himself across the United Kingdom. Lalloo was what was frequently referred to in the medical literature as a “double monstrosity,” the scientific term then used for what are now called conjoined twins. But rather than being attached to a fully grown brother, Lalloo had a much smaller sibling growing out of his chest. This chapter argues that as both a spectacular entertainment and a pathological exhibit, Lalloo's double body generated popular and professional debate about the boundary between the self and the other, and the distinction between male and female. However, his act also raised concerns about the sexual potential of a double-sexed body. Although they never explicitly addressed the sexual relationship between Lalloo and Lala, the promotional materials that accompanied the exhibition and the medical case reports that circulated in professional journals suggested that this body was intriguing because of the ways in which it exploited late Victorian anxieties about masturbation, incest, pedophilia, and child marriage.Less
At the same moment that “the Elephant Man” was admitted to the London Hospital in the summer of 1886, “Lalloo the Double-Bodied Hindoo Boy” began to exhibit himself across the United Kingdom. Lalloo was what was frequently referred to in the medical literature as a “double monstrosity,” the scientific term then used for what are now called conjoined twins. But rather than being attached to a fully grown brother, Lalloo had a much smaller sibling growing out of his chest. This chapter argues that as both a spectacular entertainment and a pathological exhibit, Lalloo's double body generated popular and professional debate about the boundary between the self and the other, and the distinction between male and female. However, his act also raised concerns about the sexual potential of a double-sexed body. Although they never explicitly addressed the sexual relationship between Lalloo and Lala, the promotional materials that accompanied the exhibition and the medical case reports that circulated in professional journals suggested that this body was intriguing because of the ways in which it exploited late Victorian anxieties about masturbation, incest, pedophilia, and child marriage.
Asia Friedman
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226023465
- eISBN:
- 9780226023779
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226023779.003.0003
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
This chapter focuses on the sexed body, introducing the mental filter of sex difference and the concept of sexpectations, the belief that “everyone is always either male or female” that organizes our ...
More
This chapter focuses on the sexed body, introducing the mental filter of sex difference and the concept of sexpectations, the belief that “everyone is always either male or female” that organizes our visual perceptions of bodies. It also highlights the overwhelming number of social norms and institutions that emphasize sex differences while ignoring sex similarities.Less
This chapter focuses on the sexed body, introducing the mental filter of sex difference and the concept of sexpectations, the belief that “everyone is always either male or female” that organizes our visual perceptions of bodies. It also highlights the overwhelming number of social norms and institutions that emphasize sex differences while ignoring sex similarities.
Asia Friedman
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226023465
- eISBN:
- 9780226023779
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226023779.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
What is the role of the senses in how we understand the world? Cognitive sociology has long addressed the way we perceive or imagine boundaries in our ordinary lives, but this book pushes this ...
More
What is the role of the senses in how we understand the world? Cognitive sociology has long addressed the way we perceive or imagine boundaries in our ordinary lives, but this book pushes this question further still. How, it asks, did we come to blind ourselves to sex sameness? Drawing on more than sixty interviews with two decidedly different populations—the blind and the transgendered—it answers provocative questions about the relationships between sex differences, biology, and visual perception. Both groups speak from unique perspectives that magnify the social construction of dominant visual conceptions of sex, allowing the author to examine the visual construction of the sexed body and highlighting the processes of social perception underlying our everyday experience of male and female bodies. The result is a notable contribution to the sociologies of gender, culture, and cognition that will revolutionize the way we think about sex.Less
What is the role of the senses in how we understand the world? Cognitive sociology has long addressed the way we perceive or imagine boundaries in our ordinary lives, but this book pushes this question further still. How, it asks, did we come to blind ourselves to sex sameness? Drawing on more than sixty interviews with two decidedly different populations—the blind and the transgendered—it answers provocative questions about the relationships between sex differences, biology, and visual perception. Both groups speak from unique perspectives that magnify the social construction of dominant visual conceptions of sex, allowing the author to examine the visual construction of the sexed body and highlighting the processes of social perception underlying our everyday experience of male and female bodies. The result is a notable contribution to the sociologies of gender, culture, and cognition that will revolutionize the way we think about sex.
Joan Wallach Scott
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- October 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195175349
- eISBN:
- 9780199835775
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195175344.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
In 2000, France enacted a parité law that calls for equal numbers of women and men to serve in various elected assemblies at all levels of government. The law challenged a theory of representation, ...
More
In 2000, France enacted a parité law that calls for equal numbers of women and men to serve in various elected assemblies at all levels of government. The law challenged a theory of representation, dating to the French Revolution, which construed the citizen as an abstract, neutral individual despite a political practice that both construed citizens as masculine and typically chose men as legislative representatives. To rectify this discrimination against women in political office, the parité movement drew a distinction between anatomical duality (the two sexes of the abstract individual) and sexual difference (the cultural attribution of gendered meaning to sexed bodies). This distinction was lost in the course of the debates about parité, however, and the law that passed seemed to implement an essentialist vision that was not the intention of its first supporters. Scott believes this tension in the support for parité is an unresolvable feature of the nature of representation in liberal or, like France, liberal republican states.Less
In 2000, France enacted a parité law that calls for equal numbers of women and men to serve in various elected assemblies at all levels of government. The law challenged a theory of representation, dating to the French Revolution, which construed the citizen as an abstract, neutral individual despite a political practice that both construed citizens as masculine and typically chose men as legislative representatives. To rectify this discrimination against women in political office, the parité movement drew a distinction between anatomical duality (the two sexes of the abstract individual) and sexual difference (the cultural attribution of gendered meaning to sexed bodies). This distinction was lost in the course of the debates about parité, however, and the law that passed seemed to implement an essentialist vision that was not the intention of its first supporters. Scott believes this tension in the support for parité is an unresolvable feature of the nature of representation in liberal or, like France, liberal republican states.
Luciana Parisi
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748634040
- eISBN:
- 9780748652563
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748634040.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter argues that notions of relational ontologies developed in the context of posthuman theories of performativity are not abstract enough to engage with the experiential adventures of a ...
More
This chapter argues that notions of relational ontologies developed in the context of posthuman theories of performativity are not abstract enough to engage with the experiential adventures of a body-sex. Based on the philosophy of abstract materialism developed in the works of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, it explores queer sexuality through the notion of the abstract machine as enabling us to conceive the pure experience, event and dramatisation of many sexes without falling back onto the ontological constitution of queer sexuality. The chapter highlights the importance of engaging with the virtual worlds of many sexes implicated in the individuation of a multiplicity of sexuality producing utterances in order to affirm a queer ontology in the context of the philosophy of immanence.Less
This chapter argues that notions of relational ontologies developed in the context of posthuman theories of performativity are not abstract enough to engage with the experiential adventures of a body-sex. Based on the philosophy of abstract materialism developed in the works of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, it explores queer sexuality through the notion of the abstract machine as enabling us to conceive the pure experience, event and dramatisation of many sexes without falling back onto the ontological constitution of queer sexuality. The chapter highlights the importance of engaging with the virtual worlds of many sexes implicated in the individuation of a multiplicity of sexuality producing utterances in order to affirm a queer ontology in the context of the philosophy of immanence.
