The Body Essay -- Sexuality

The social and cultural conditions in which we live in today continue to perpetuate and maintain the rape culture that pervades our lives, in particular for the lives of individual women. As a feminist thinker, Ann Cahill works to change this by challenging current definitions of rape as assault, and addressing questions of why rape exists in the root 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 pistillate ashes as a potential site of resistance against gender-based oppression and a larger system of sexual domination (Cahill 32). Although each is addressing very dissimilar issues in feminist theory, Cahill does draw upon some of Butlers ideas about the imitation and performance of gender in Butlers essay assumed and Gender Insubordination. Cahill does this in order to further articulate her critique of the body and the bureau it plays in the phenomenon of rape as an embodied experience of women at the aim 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 relationship between sexuality and gender, and the problematic nature of social constructs. By comparing 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 rap e culture, the hierarchy of gender, and gender performativity. The one thing they all have in common that is essential to collar 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 unfavorable position and powerlessness, but it can also be the one thing that can free us from the same system of oppression. Works CitedButler, Judith. Imitation and Gender Insubordination. The due south 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.