This
is a question arising frequently in academia for those of us doing feminist
work. However, perhaps the question we should be asking is: What is “normal” or
“natural?” Such questions seem inherent
to fields such as psychology, yet the conceptualization of such terms is
inextricably intertwined with capitalism and systems of power. Though scientific
research including psychology has contributed to the creation and perpetuation
of identity categories and power hierarchies, these foundational ideologies are
largely ignored and power structures are generally examined in isolation, if at
all. Historical texts in the field
of sexology are embedded in contemporary racial ideologies (Somerville, 1994), such that it is remiss to speak
of only sexuality or gender without considerations of other systems of power
such as race and class.
U.S.
policy relies on the politics of identity and culture (Duggan, 2003).
The ideal of the “normal American” arose through a dramatically
racialized understanding of sexuality (Carter, 2007, p. 2), producing the nebulous concept of
“normal whiteness” situated within heteronormativity, which refers to the way
in which our society views conventional gender roles, heterosexuality, and the
nuclear family as “normal” (Crouch, McNair, & Waters, 2017).
The key to “normal whiteness” relates to constructing and teaching white
normality while not appearing to do so, such that normality enabled discourse
related to race and sexuality occurs without discussion of the power systems
upon which they were based (Carter, 2007).
Thus, rather than phrases such as, “This is how proper white people do
it,” the discourse shifted to, “This is how normal people do it.”
Comparative
anatomists consistently utilized sexual characteristics of the female body as a
site of racial difference. In
particular, early sexologists, “constructed the site of racial difference by
marking the sexual and reproductive anatomy of the African woman as ‘peculiar’;
in their characterization, sexual ambiguity delineated the boundaries of race” (Somerville, 1994, p. 252), suggesting that the female body
could be used as a visible tool to rank bodies per societal norms. Such methodology was similarly utilized to
differentiate lesbians from “normal” women.
For instance, the myth of the overly large clitoris in black and lesbian
women (Somerville, 1994, p. 253) is an example of the way in which
“women’s bodies often demarcate the boundaries between groups that are defined
in fundamentally patriarchal terms” (Luibhéid, 2002, p. xix).
Early research related to intersex individuals was also steeped in
racial biases, as evidenced by terminology such as “shades of gender” and
“sexual half-breeds” (Somerville, 1994, p. 259).
Early
sexologists frequently utilized evolutionary theory and recapitulation as a
means of justifying their comparisons and validating their findings. Much of the medical literature during this
time period suggests that sexual characteristics are indicators of evolutionary
progress, such that lesbian women and individuals of color were viewed as
sexually differentiated and thus less evolved: “According to the logic of
recapitulation, adult African Americans and white women were at the same stage
as white male children and therefore represented an ancestral stage in the
evolution of adult white males” (Somerville, 2000, p. 24).
This contributed to focus on miscegenation and eugenics as reproduction
of “desirable” elements of the population corresponded to those of “normal”
Americans and thus white, heterosexual, middle- to upper-class, able-bodied,
Christian, cis males (Carter, 2007).
Such views inherently pathologize
individuals that exhibit non-“normal” behavior or identities while ignoring the
influences of context. However, feminist research makes central the following
questions which inherently question normality throughout all stages of the
research process:
Does this
work/analysis define the researched as either passive victims or as deviant?
Does it reinscribe the research into prevailing representations? […] What are
the relationships of domination and subordination which the researcher has
negotiated and what are the means through which they are discussed in the
research report? […] How are questions of difference dealt with in the research
study – in its design, conduct, write up, dissemination? (Bhavnani, 1993, p.
98)
Furthermore,
a feminist epistemology sheds light
on the ways in which the present is inextricably intertwined with, and must be
held accountable to, the past. For
example, Native feminisms centrally address two issues: (1) The U.S. (and
many other Western countries) are settler colonial nation-states, and (2)
settler colonialism is (always has been, and always will be) a gendered process
(Arvin, Tuck, & Morrill, 2013). Thus, “native
feminist theories offer new and reclaimed ways of thinking through not only how
settler colonialism has impacted Indigenous and settler communities, but also
how feminist theories can imagine and realize different modes of nationalism
and alliances in the future” (Arvin et al. 2013, p. 9).
Similarly, Chicana feminisms emphasize racialized
intersectionalities, theorizing from lived experience as a knowledge base (Pérez Huber & Cueva, 2012). Of critical
importance are the ways in which “Chicana feminisms have transformed over time
and inscribe into history counternarratives, testimonios, and autohistorias
(autobiographies) that preserve and document experiential knowledge of
Chicana’s Latinas that have been erased by imperial, colonial, and hegemonic
feminist discourses” (Pérez Huber, & Cueva, 2012, p. 395). Thus, the
agency, experience, knowledge, history, and voice of both past and present that
have been rendered silent in the majority of neoliberal discourse are integral
to projects of Chicana feminisms and moving towards a truly collective society.
What
does feminism have to do with my research?
Everything.
Written
by Cathryn Richmond
References:
Arvin, M., Tuck, E., & Morrill, A. (2013). Decolonizing
feminism: Challenging connections between settler colonialism and
heteropatriarchy. Feminist Formations, 25(1), 8–34.
https://doi.org/10.1353/ff.2013.0006
Carter, J. B. (2007). The search for Norma. In The heart
of whiteness: Normal sexuality and race in America, 1880-1940 (pp. 1–41).
Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822389583-001
Crouch, S. R., McNair, R., & Waters, E. (2017). Parent
perspectives on child health and wellbeing in same-sex families:
Heteronormative conflict and resilience building. Journal of Child and
Family Studies, 26(8), 2202–2214.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-017-0796-3
Duggan, L. (2003). The twilight of equality?
Neoliberalism, cultural politics, and the attack on democracy. Beacon
Press. Boston: Beacon Press.
Luibhéid, E. (2002). Introduction: Power and sexuality at the
border. In Entry denied: Controlling sexuality at the border.
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Retrieved from
https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/entry-denied
Pérez Huber, L., & Cueva, B. M. (2012). Chicana/Latina
testimonios on effects and responses to microaggressions. Equity and
Excellence in Education, 45(3), 392–410.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2012.698193
Somerville, S. (1994). Scientific racism and the emergence of
the homosexual body. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 5(2),
243–266. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3704199
Somerville, S. (2000). Queering the color line: Race and
the invention of homosexuality in American culture. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107415324.004
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