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The Gender of Psychology
 1919713921, 9781919713922

Table of contents :
Contents
Foreword • Cheryl de la Rey
Preface • Tamara Shefer, Floretta Boonzaier & Peace Kiguwa
About the authors
Abbreviations and acronyms
Section 1: (Re)production of knowledge in psychology
1 Gendered research • Floretta Boonzaier & Tamara Shefer
2 Narratives of gender and identity constructs • Peace Kiguwa
3 The possibility of a refl exive gaze: The relevance of feminist debates on reflexivity, representation and situated knowledges for psychology • Ingrid Palmary
4 Psychoanalysis, sexual difference and the castration problematic • Derek Hook
5 Lacan, the meaning of the phallus, and the ‘sexed’ subject • Derek Hook
6 Women as a minority group • Gillian Finchilescu
Section 2: De/re-constructing psychological knowledge about gender
7 Sexualities • Tamara Shefer & Cheryl Potgieter
8 Early reproduction and gendered assumptions about adolescence and adolescent (hetero)sexuality • Catriona Macleod
9 A gendered analysis of woman abuse • Floretta Boonzaier
10 Analysing a text on the prevailing paradigm of ‘family’ in the ‘psy’ professions • Vivienne Bozalek
11 Men and masculinities: Psychology and politics • Kopano Ratele
12 Motherhood • Lou-Marié Kruger
13 ‘Going places’: Black women negotiating race and gender in post-apartheid South Africa • Carol Long & Estelle Zietkiewicz
Section 3: Gendered practice and profession
14 Pathological wombs and raging hormones: Psychology, reproduction and the female body • Rachelle Chadwick
15 Western psychiatry and gender identity disorder (GID): A critical perspective • Estian Smit
16 Becoming a psychologist: Professionalism, feminism, activism • Jane Callaghan
References
Index

Citation preview

the Gender of

Psychology Editors:

Tamara Shefer Floretta Boonzaier Peace Kiguwa

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The Gender of Psychology First published 2006 Juta & Co Mercury Crescent Wetton, 7780 Cape Town, South Africa © 2006 Juta & Co Ltd ISBN (print): 1-9197-1392-1 ISBN (webPDF): 978 1 77582 27 76 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Typeset in 10/12 Berkley Oldstyle Book Project Manager: Melanie Wagner Editor: Ken McGillivray Indexer: Cecily van Gend Proofreader: David Merrington Typesetter: McKoreGraphics, 5 Dennestreet, Panorama Cover designer: WaterBerry cc

Photographs by: N Behring; F. Boonzaier; V. Bozalek; K. Jungar; P. Kiguwa; S. Matsinhe; Z. Muholi; F. Pagetti; T. Shefer; UNHCR; UWC Robben Island Mayibuye Archives; Zenzo The authors and the publisher have made every effort to obtain permission for and to acknowledge the use of copyright material. Should any infringement of copyright have occured, please contact the publisher, and every effort will be made to rectify omissions or errors in the event of a reprint or new edition.

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Contents Foreword ...................................................................................................................viii Cheryl de la Rey Preface .........................................................................................................................x Tamara Shefer, Floretta Boonzaier & Peace Kiguwa About the authors ..................................................................................................... xvi Abbreviations and acronyms .................................................................................... xix

SECTION 1: (RE)PRODUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE IN PSYCHOLOGY 1 Gendered research ...................................................................................................3 Floretta Boonzaier & Tamara Shefer Introduction ..................................................................................................................3 Psychological research in question .................................................................................3 Qualitative research .......................................................................................................5 Feminist research ...........................................................................................................6 Key principles in feminist research methodologies ..........................................................8 Feminist research in South Africa .................................................................................10 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................11 2 Narratives of gender and identity constructs ....................................................... 12 Peace Kiguwa Introduction ................................................................................................................12 Some tensions within debates concerning identity ........................................................13 Why narrative? (Re)telling one’s story ...........................................................................15 Focus on black women’s narratives ...............................................................................16 The depth hermeneutics of Ricoeur ..............................................................................18 Reconceptualising the self in psychology ......................................................................20 Human action as analogous to a text ............................................................................22 Positing gendered identity: durable and changing identities ..........................................24 ‘Authentic’ versus ‘ideological’ experience ....................................................................25 The role of imagination ................................................................................................25 Distanciation ...............................................................................................................26 Critique of Ricoeur ......................................................................................................27 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................28

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3 The possibility of a reflexive gaze: The relevance of feminist debates on reflexivity, representation and situated knowledges for psychology .................... 29 Ingrid Palmary Introduction ................................................................................................................29 Background to the project ............................................................................................30 Representing the other: the construction of difference ..................................................31 The myth of the transparent intellectual: locating ourselves in the research ...................37 Developing a situated account (and recognising a partial reading) ................................41 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................43 4 Psychoanalysis, sexual difference and the castration problematic ....................... 45 Derek Hook Sexual identification as mode of constitution ................................................................45 Problems with construction .........................................................................................46 Approaching psychoanalysis ........................................................................................47 Freud and forward .......................................................................................................47 So what then produces sexual difference? .....................................................................48 Rooted in the body: inevitable recourse to the penis?....................................................49 Sexual researchers: body as surface of experience and distinction .................................50 A narcissism of lack and loss ........................................................................................50 Rethinking issues of castration .....................................................................................52 The Oedipus complex ..................................................................................................54 The ‘no’ of the father ....................................................................................................55 The making of a sexed subject......................................................................................56 Castration complex as institution of social law .............................................................56 The possibility of a trans-historical structure? ...............................................................58 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................59 5 Lacan, the meaning of the phallus, and the ‘sexed’ subject .................................. 60 Derek Hook The human in language: an unnatural fit ......................................................................60 Being in the Imaginary .................................................................................................61 The impasse of the Imaginary.......................................................................................62 The role of the signifier ................................................................................................63 Language as a system of differences, substitutions, exclusions.......................................66 The experience of lack .................................................................................................67 Operations of subjectivity ............................................................................................67 Inadequacy of the Symbolic: the castration of entry into language ................................68 The question of the mother’s desire ..............................................................................70 The absent object .........................................................................................................70 Being the phallus .........................................................................................................71 Phallus as signifier of lack ............................................................................................71 The phallus as it exists in the Imaginary and in the Symbolic .......................................72 From Imaginary object to signifier of lack: giving up the phallus ..................................73 Resolving the Oedipus complex ...................................................................................75

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The Name-of-the-Father ..............................................................................................76 The paternal metaphor .................................................................................................77 To (try) to be or to have ...............................................................................................79 Different versions of castration; different relations to lack .............................................81 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................82 6 Women as a minority group................................................................................... 85 Gillian Finchilescu The ‘group’ crisis in social psychology ..........................................................................85 Gender and knowledge ................................................................................................86 Women as a minority group .........................................................................................87 Discrimination and prejudice .......................................................................................89 Social identity theory ...................................................................................................92 Insights emerging from SIT ..........................................................................................95 Critiques of the minority group argument: the feminist–non-feminist dichotomy ..........97 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................99

SECTION 2: DE/RE-CONSTRUCTING PSYCHOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE ABOUT GENDER 7 Sexualities ............................................................................................................ 103 Tamara Shefer & Cheryl Potgieter Introduction ..............................................................................................................103 Sexuality under scrutiny ............................................................................................104 Marginalised sexualities in South Africa ......................................................................104 Shifting psychological conceptualisations of homosexuality ........................................105 South African psychological research on homosexuality .............................................106 Early research in South African psychology ................................................................108 More recent research ..................................................................................................108 Heterosexuality under scrutiny...................................................................................110 The intersection of gender with other forms of power inequalities in sexuality ............112 Male power and women’s lack of negotiation in sexual relationships ...........................112 Coercive and violent practices ....................................................................................115 Developmental contexts of heterosexual power relations ............................................117 The impact of HIV/Aids on heterosex .........................................................................118 Critical evaluation of contemporary South African work on sexualities .......................118 8 Early reproduction and gendered assumptions about adolescence and adolescent (hetero)sexuality ............................................................................... 121 Catriona Macleod Introduction ..............................................................................................................121 The history of teenage pregnancy ...............................................................................124 Adolescence: a time of transition ................................................................................125 Adolescent (hetero)sexuality ......................................................................................130 Conclusion ................................................................................................................133

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9 A gendered analysis of woman abuse .................................................................. 135 Floretta Boonzaier Introduction ..............................................................................................................135 Understanding woman abuse .....................................................................................136 Feminist understandings of woman abuse ..................................................................139 A feminist post-structuralist understanding of woman abuse ......................................141 Women’s accounts of violence ....................................................................................143 Men’s accounts of violence .........................................................................................147 Conclusion ................................................................................................................150 10 Analysing a text on the prevailing paradigm of ‘family’ in the ‘psy’ professions ......................................................................................................... 151 Vivienne Bozalek Introduction ..............................................................................................................151 The ‘psy’ professions as disciplinary practice ..............................................................158 ‘Psy’ professionals as arbiters of the ‘normal’ ...............................................................160 Subjugated knowledges ..............................................................................................161 Power as resistance: using students’ subjugated knowledges to inform the curriculum.............................................................................................................162 Conclusion ................................................................................................................163 11 Men and masculinities: Psychology and politics ............................................... 165 Kopano Ratele Introduction ..............................................................................................................165 Psycho-political recapturing .......................................................................................166 Testing and rehearsing identities ................................................................................168 The situation of Biko .................................................................................................169 About ‘We blacks’ ......................................................................................................171 Men and their times ...................................................................................................175 Blackness and the loss of manhood ............................................................................176 On our own ...............................................................................................................179 Conclusion ................................................................................................................181 12 Motherhood........................................................................................................ 182 Lou-Marié Kruger Introduction ..............................................................................................................182 Ideologies of motherhood ..........................................................................................183 Motherhood objectified: the mother as patient and the self-sacrificing mother ............184 Trends in psychological research on motherhood, mothering and mothers in South Africa ...............................................................................................................194 Conclusion ................................................................................................................195

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13 ‘Going places’: Black women negotiating race and gender in post-apartheid South Africa ...................................................................................................... 198 Carol Long & Estelle Zietkiewicz Introduction ..............................................................................................................198 Post-structuralism, feminism and psychology .............................................................200 Analysis .....................................................................................................................202 Conclusion ................................................................................................................218

SECTION 3: GENDERED PRACTICE AND PROFESSION 14 Pathological wombs and raging hormones: Psychology, reproduction and the female body .................................................................................................. 223 Rachelle Chadwick Introduction ..............................................................................................................223 Madness and the female body ....................................................................................224 Psychology and women’s reproductive bodies .............................................................228 Theorising the body: feminist approaches...................................................................239 Towards a richer (feminist) psychology of embodiment ..............................................247 Conclusion ................................................................................................................248 15 Western psychiatry and gender identity disorder (GID): A critical perspective ......................................................................................................... 250 Estian Smit Introduction ..............................................................................................................250 The DSM and ICD .....................................................................................................252 European history and gender/body diversity...............................................................255 Sexual inversion in the nineteenth century .................................................................256 The emergence of the transsexual model in the twentieth century ...............................258 The Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA) ..............262 Diagnostic criteria for gender identity disorders (GIDs) ..............................................263 Approaches to service delivery ...................................................................................277 Trans(c)ending GID ...................................................................................................282 Conclusion ................................................................................................................287 16 Becoming a psychologist: Professionalism, feminism, activism ...................... 293 Jane Callaghan Introduction ..............................................................................................................293 Psychology’s subjects? ................................................................................................295 Gender in South African psychology ..........................................................................295 Professionalisation and depoliticisation ......................................................................297 The feminisation of psychology ..................................................................................301 Conclusions: possibilities for activism? .......................................................................305 References ............................................................................................................... 307 Index ....................................................................................................................... 346

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Foreword It was only in the 1980s that feminist theory trickled into social science analysis in South Africa. In psychology this initially took the form of individual psychologists introducing gender-related issues into conventional teaching programmes and trying to address genderrelated questions via research projects. Much of this work took the form of post-graduate dissertations that were not published in mainstream journals and textbooks. It is pleasing to observe that much has changed since then in that gender has moved from the periphery, perhaps not to the centre, but is undoubtedly more visible in the teaching curriculum of most psychology departments in South African universities. There are also indications of an increasing number of research projects and publications that give attention to genderrelated issues. The publication of this textbook is a milestone event in the growing visibility of gender in psychology both as a profession and as an academic discipline. While there have been many psychology textbooks on gender, this is the first one published in South Africa. This is significant not simply because it is a matter of geography, but because of the very complex evolution of feminist theory in South Africa. Early references to feminist theory were predominantly informed by theoretical developments as they were occurring in the United States and the United Kingdom. Since in those contexts it was the time of second wave feminism, the thinking of liberal, radical and socialist feminisms shaped many of the ideas of early feminism in South Africa. After considerable debate and critique, many South African academics and activists found that these Northern feminisms were not completely applicable to local circumstances. In South Africa it was the time of apartheid and, as a result, the development of feminist theorising was to a large extent moulded by racial divisions and the struggle against apartheid. Many South African women, especially during the time of the anti-apartheid struggle, rejected feminism as intellectual imperialism and as a potentially divisive issue among black South Africans. The perception of feminism as imperialism resonated with the international challenge to the domination of white, Western women in feminism and in particular, it resonated with the debates about an African feminism. Contradiction, fragmentation and difference have been features in the development of feminist thinking in South Africa. From a time when debates about difference of race, class and sexuality were viewed as disruptive, we have moved to creating spaces for openly engaging with knowledge/power struggles and the hierarchy of identities in Western thought. The contents of this textbook reflect that many assumptions about gender as a binary made up of unitary categories of women and men have been disrupted by critical stances that call into question long-standing notions of identity and truth. For psychology this critique has meant that its traditional mandate of producing objective knowledge about humanity has been fundamentally challenged as elucidated in the first few chapters of this book. The Gender of Psychology succeeds in inviting the reader to reflect and critique and, in

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so doing, extends our thinking about questions such as what is gender, why and how does gender matter, and, very importantly, the relevance of gender in our daily lives in South Africa? It also succeeds in drawing our attention to psychology itself as gendered practice. Although within South Africa there has been widespread acknowledgement of the deeply political nature of psychology, not much focus has been given to the question of psychology doing gender. Therefore, the approach taken by Tammy Shefer, Floretta Boonzaier and Peace Kiguwa is particularly insightful in taking up this issue. From the perspective of a psychologist who has participated in gender-related debates over the years, I am delighted to add my voice to this milestone publication which not only offers a contemporary overview of gender in psychology and the psychology of gender, but also brings to the fore new work from across the country. In the various chapters, the contributors illuminate the multiple ways in which gender is enacted, disrupted and reproduced in new and familiar ways. The infusion of perspectives informed by local realities is important and timely in our society where, as South Africans, we are charting new territory in trying to realise the human rights enshrined in our Constitution.

Cheryl de la Rey Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Psychology University of Cape Town November 2005

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Preface Tamara Shefer, Floretta Boonzaier and Peace Kiguwa

We name this text ‘The Gender of Psychology’ by way of signposting our attempt to do something different to what psychology usually does and says with respect to women, men and gender. We attempt to destabilise the accepted and normative authority of psychology as a discipline and practice over gender through its historical ‘The Psychology of Gender’. Psychology, as we have come to realise, while professing to theorise on gender, does research on gender, develops norms and standards with respect to what is ‘normal’ and healthy with respect to gender, is in fact doing gender (West & Zimmerman 1992). Thus, just as we, as men and women, perform our gender in the ways that are socially prescribed in our particular contexts, so psychology mirrors that, and perhaps more importantly reproduces that in a way that is far more authoritative and prescriptive than popular wisdom, given its identity as a body of expert and scientific knowledge. This text, while distinctly of South African flavour, emerges out of broader historical movements in critical, social and feminist psychology and women’s and gender studies. There is a long critique of the conservative nature of psychology and wide acknowledgement of its role in regulating human behaviour towards reproducing dominant power relations. Thus, it has been well illustrated how psychology has served the interests of those in power, for example the development of measures and instruments within educational and industry contexts that have served to legitimise and reproduce social differences on the basis of class, race and gender; the generation of norms and regulatory practices that have rationalised and pathologised those who resist traditional gender roles, sexual identities, or even oppressive social structures; and the provision of therapeutic services that have been preserved for the privileged white middle-class minority. Feminists from within and outside the discipline of psychology have mounted a long argument about the ways in which psychology has been male-centric and both reflected and reproduced sexist practices and gender power relations. It has been well illustrated, for example, that psychology has set up standards for healthy, ‘normal’ personalities and behaviours that are traditionally male, and that have depended on knowledge that reflects only Western, middle-class male experience (see for example, Burman 1994; Gilligan 1982, 1987). Similarly, applied psychology has been shown to pathologise women’s experiences and ways of being, especially when women resist their traditional roles (for example, Chesler 1972; Gilligan 1977). A large body of feminist psychology has developed that argues for the reconstruction of a psychology that represents women’s experiences, that acknowledges the multiplicity of gender and its intersection with other subjectivities, such as race, class, sexual preference, and so on, and that draws on feminist and qualitative methodologies to address issues of gender inequality that have been

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traditionally ignored by psychologists, such as gender-based violence, coercive and inequitable practices in heterosexual relationships at both a sexual and domestic level, to name but a few (see for example, Bohan 1992; Burman et al 1996; Gergen 2001; Gergen & Davis 1997; Hare-Mustin & Maracek 1990; Wilkinson 1986; Wilkinson & Kitzinger 1995). In South Africa we woke up to our own context of the problematic role of psychology in supporting and legitimising apartheid ideology somewhat late in the broader ‘crisis’ of psychology that had been emerging for some time in the international context. In the early 1980s we saw psychologists both critiquing their role in South African society as well as attempting to reconstruct the role of psychology (see for example, Nicholas 1993; Nicholas & Cooper 1990; Potgieter & De la Rey 1997; also see editions of the journal Psychology in Society 1981 to present day). Post-1994, we remain a psychology that, while aware of its historical role and the challenges of the future, is still fraught with the inequalities of the broader South Africa, for example, white men still dominant as producers of knowledge, with white women and black men lagging behind and black women particularly under-represented within psychology more broadly and particular as published authors and researchers (see for example, Duncan 2004; Seedat 1992, 1997; Shefer et al 2004; Van Niekerk & Shefer 2001), and we continue to rely predominantly on Euro-centric texts for our teaching and research. The latter has been addressed to some extent with the emergence of a growing base of indigenous psychology texts over the last decade, fortunately many of them within the genre of critical psychology (see for example, De la Rey et al 1997; Duncan et al 2001, 2002; Hook et al 2004; Hook & Eagle 2002; Ratele & Duncan 2003). On the other hand, while a focus on gender emerges in many of these books, this remains an area marginalised in South African psychology as it is internationally. This book intends to address that gap, though such an intention needs to be located within the knowledge that this is only a beginning and admittedly partial. The book has two other major goals, besides the above-stated attempt to generate and represent local knowledge on the psychology of gender and the gender of psychology. These are: first, to deconstruct the way in which psychology has traditionally spoken about women, men and gender; and second, to present alternative models of theorising on gender that acknowledge the complexity and multiplicity of what it is to be gendered and how this plays out specifically within South African local contexts. The Gender of Psychology is divided into three sections. In the first, entitled ‘The (re)production of knowledge in psychology’, we present a number of chapters that speak to philosophical and methodological issues within the discipline of psychology, foregrounding some of the key debates in broader feminist theory and methodology and their implications within psychology globally and in South Africa. While criticising psychological knowledge for reproducing sexist and racist practices, both through neglect and active intervention, the section also acknowledges the contributions that some streams of psychology, including social and psychoanalytic theory, have made to theorising gender and the way in which alternative methodologies of research in psychology have developed following the transdisciplinary impact of feminism. In the first chapter in this section, Floretta Boonzaier and Tamara Shefer examine the

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sexist biases in traditional psychological research and provide a critical overview of traditional psychological research methodologies. They show how women’s experiences have often been marginalised or distorted through an emphasis on positivist forms of knowledge production. The impact of feminist research and other critical research methodologies on the realm of psychological research and broader social scientific research is also explicated. Peace Kiguwa’s chapter engages with feminist debates concerning identity and identity formation. She explores Ricoeur’s notions of narrative identity and the self, arguing that feminist constructs of gender identity may require some reformulation. She also argues that narrative approaches to identity should take into account the creative and strategic responses to social change that may be adopted, as this fosters better explorations of the ways women may become active agents within societies. Ingrid Palmary’s chapter uses examples from a study of women who had been forcibly displaced to explore key feminist debates and their relevance to South African psychology. She examines the intersecting feminist debates on representation, reflexivity and situated analysis and shows how these have the effect of according greater attention to the politics of knowledge production within post-colonial societies with complex histories surrounding the negotiation of subjectivity. In the first of two chapters, Derek Hook examines the issue of sexual difference from a psychoanalytic perspective. The chapter explores some important concepts from Freudian psychoanalysis, showing how a psychoanalytic account of sexual identification is always an unconscious process that is not irreducible to social construction or biology alone. Although Freud has come under much criticism from within feminist theory, Hook alerts us to the value of Freud’s contributions to the construction of sexual difference. In a follow-up to the preceding chapter, Derek Hook explores Lacanian reformulations of Freudian psychoanalytic theory with regard to the process of sexual identification. By discussing some key concepts of Lacan’s theoretical account, in particular his centralisation of the Symbolic and his conceptualisation of language and signification, Hook illustrates how Lacan’s reformulations avoid an inevitable recourse to the essentialism of biological or anatomical explanations. Hook concludes that, despite the feminist debate about whether psychoanalysis reinforces or explains patriarchy, it does offer us critical tools and conceptual resources that are useful to understanding sexual identification processes. Gillian Finchilescu’s chapter, ‘Women as a minority group’, reviews the contributions that psychology, particularly social psychology, have made to the conceptualisation of women as a social group and to the understanding of gender roles, sexism and gender stereotypes. It also explores how social psychological theories of inter-group relationships, such as Social Identity Theory (SIT), have theorised gender and investigated the role of women in society. Finchilescu shows that the tools of social psychology are useful for understanding women’s position in the social world. The second section, ‘De/re-constructing psychological knowledge about gender’, addresses particular gendered content areas that psychology has produced in theory and research, such as in the broad area of sexualities; adolescence; gender identities and gendered practices; the institution of the family; gender-based violence; and the experiences of women across gender and race. Arguably such knowledge has inevitably been problematic in so far as it has served to reproduce and reflect sexist practices and legitimise unequal power relations on the basis of gender.

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In the first chapter in this section, Tamara Shefer and Cheryl Potgieter present a wide spread of thinking on sexualities, first illustrating how psychology has historically set itself up as an authority on normative sexual identity and practice, legitimising heterosexuality while pathologising non-heterosexual identities and practices. The chapter draws on alternative theory and empirical works to speak of alternative sexualities globally and in a local context before moving on to problematise heterosexuality from a feminist perspective, highlighting the way in which ‘normal’ heterosexual relations are fraught with inequalities and coercive, violent practices, which has facilitated great vulnerability for both men and women in the context of the Aids pandemic. The chapter calls for a postmodern feminist understanding of sexualities and genders which acknowledges the multiplicity of gendered and sexual experiences and practices. Catriona Macleod’s chapter ‘Early reproduction and gendered assumptions about adolescence and adolescent (hetero)sexuality’, uses the example of teenage pregnancy as a point of departure for examining gendered assumptions concerning adolescence and adolescent (hetero)sexuality in psychology. The chapter provides a broad sweep of the sociohistorical emergence of the psychological discourse on adolescence and teenage pregnancy. The chapter both critiques the traditional perspectives on adolescence and problematises the way in which teenage pregnancy has been foregrounded in psychological work on adolescence in a way that is gendered. Providing clear evidence of sexist practices in theory and research on teenage pregnancy the author shows how psychology serves to legitimise and reproduce dominant moral discourses on sexuality. Floretta Boonzaier’s chapter on gender-based violence explores traditional psychological literature on woman abuse, illustrating the psychological, social and cultural discourses that have been employed to understand why men perpetrate violence against their intimate woman partners. The author also shows how an individualist psychological perspective obscures a variety of mechanisms of oppression and that the problem is best understood from a dynamic, feminist post-structuralist perspective. The chapter further highlights the way in which gender-based violence is raced and classed which has been largely neglected by both feminists and psychologists in their assumptions of a unitary experience of womanhood. Vivienne Bozalek’s chapter addresses the family, an institution that psychology has had much to say about but has generally tended to neglect applying a gendered lens to and has tended to assume a western nuclear family as the universal and idealised norm. The chapter draws on local data which highlights multiplicity in the way in which families are structured and that also acknowledges the way in which families and the roles of different members are gendered, classed and structured along lines of age. In particular, the chapter problematises gender and adult-child power inequalities and explores the dynamics and consequences of domestic violence towards women and children. Kopano Ratele’s chapter on masculinities addresses an area that has been historically neglected by psychology. While psychology has based much of its empirically-based knowledge on the experience of men and has been dominated internationally by men, predominantly white, middle-class, Western men both in applied practice and knowledge production, psychology has tended to neglect a critical study of men. Informed by the international work of critical men’s studies, feminist and post-colonial work, this chapter speaks predominantly to questions of black masculinities in dialogue with Steve Biko’s psychologically insightful and politically critical work on racism and oppression.

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In the chapter on mothering, Lou-Marié Kruger critically explores traditional psychological meanings of motherhood and the vast psychological literature on mothering to expose the dominant ideologies on motherhood and how these are contextualised in different historical and socio-cultural contexts. The chapter, again drawing on local studies, highlights the ways in which different motherhood ideologies and their prescriptions on mothering impact on women’s subjective experience of motherhood and their mothering practices, often in problematic ways. The chapter argues that ideologies of motherhood still conceal the many different meanings that mothering can have for different women and especially how these meanings are shaped by socio-cultural contexts. Long and Zietkiewicz present an analysis of some reflections of young black university women regarding their experiences of identity, with particular focus on how categories of race and gender are conflictually incorporated into lived experience. Situating this analysis within the post-apartheid era with its emphasis on increased racial and gender equality, the authors demonstrate how gendered subject positions evoked by family and culture versus the university may be conflictual. Another key focus of the chapter centres on its engagement with broader discourses of race and racism. The authors conclude that there exists a complex interplay between ‘female’ identities and ‘black’ identities, suggesting that these may have some implications for agitating and unsettling dominant discourses. The final section of the book, Gendered practice and profession, focuses on a number of areas of applied psychology or areas of psychological knowledge that have particular import for practice. While it may be argued that all the arguments before impact on the way in which psychology is practised, these chapters address areas that are more clearly examples of the material incursion of psychology, including the role of psychological diagnosis and practice in regulating ‘normative’ roles and identities, in particular gender identities, psychological discourse on pregnancy and birth, and the training of psychologists. Of course there are many areas of psychological practice that are not covered in this section, such as the work of the educational and industrial psychologist which have been clearly shown to be gendered spaces of practice. Nonetheless it is hoped that this section is illustrative of some of the ways in which psychological practice is gendered as well as the manner in which psychological discourse may impact on other areas of ‘expert’ practices that impact on women’s (and men’s) lives. Estian Smit’s chapter entitled ‘Beyond gender identity disorder’, reflects critically on how psychiatric diagnoses of gender identity disorder (GID) function to perpetuate a binary concept of gender as normative. This chapter draws on critical perspectives as well as narratives of those diagnosable with GID to illustrate how the notion of identity disorders serves to pathologise and suppress any diversity in the experience of gender and gendered bodies. The chapter serves as an excellent example of how diagnostic nomenclatures such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and International Classification of Diseases (ICD) have served to define, constrain and regulate normative binary gendered practices and identities. Rachelle Chadwick’s chapter, ‘Pathological wombs and raging hormones’, explores a pertinent area of concern for feminist psychologists, that is the rather contentious issue of women and the body. The chapter presents a theoretical and historical overview of this subject, addressing some of the major debates that have been of immense interest within the gender literature. The role of medical experts in intervention, and the re/production of the female body in socio-medical discourse are some of the issues tackled by the author.

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Finally, the chapter by Jane Callaghan addresses a realm that is particularly relevant to current students of psychology, exploring the delicate relationship between professional practice and feminist praxis. Established discourses of professionalisation that form part of most professional training programmes are implicated not only in how trainees position themselves, but also how they are positioned to identify themselves. The chapter makes the argument that professionalisation, in its push for accepted standards of practice, has inadvertently (and yet paradoxically, consciously) done away with those styles of work that may be idiosyncratic and unconventional, but otherwise effective.

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About the authors

Floretta Boonzaier is a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cape Town. Her research interests include most aspects of feminist psychological research, the social construction of gendered and racial subjectivities, woman abuse and other forms of gender-based violence and all areas of qualitative research methodology. Vivienne Bozalek obtained her PhD from Utrecht University and is presently chairperson of the Department of Social Work, University of the Western Cape. Her research interests and experience include research methodology, feminist research methodology, epistemology, gender and family policy, family studies, human capabilities approach, critical reflection, the impacts of race, gender and generation on pedagogical processes, cultural and institutional racism, ethics of care and social justice, academic development issues and e-learning. Jane Callaghan studied psychology at the University of Natal. She has a background in applied and academic psychology, and has particular interests in feminist, postcolonial, discursive and critical readings of psychology. She is currently a senior lecturer at University College Northampton, United Kingdom. Rachelle Chadwick is a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cape Town. Her doctoral research involves an exploration of bodies and agency in birthing narratives. Other research interests include reproductive health and sexuality. Gillian Finchilescu is Professor of Psychology at the University of the Witwatersrand. She studied at the University of Cape Town and Oxford University. Her research interests are mainly in the area of social psychology, with a particular focus on intergroup relations and gender issues. Derek Hook was until 2003 a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is now a member of the Institute of Social Psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Research Associate, School of Human and Community Development, Wits University. His theoretical interests include post-structural theory, gender politics, psychoanalysis and critical social theory. He has acted as an editor for Critical Psychology and Psychopathology and Social Prejudice (both UCT Press). Peace Kiguwa lectures in gender, qualitative methods and social psychology at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her research interests are mainly in the area of intergroup relations, gender and race. She has acted as co-editor on Critical Psychology.

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Lou-Marié Kruger is Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology at Stellenbosch University. She is the co-ordinator of the MA programme in Clinical Psychology and Community Counselling and practices as a clinical psychologist. Her research for the last five years has focused on the psychological distress and resilience of low-income black mothers in South Africa. She is currently working on a manuscript entitled ‘Marginal maternities: The impact of poverty, race and culture on the psychological experience of motherhood’. Carol Long is a clinical psychologist and lecturer in the discipline of Psychology, University of the Witwatersrand. She is currently completing her PhD through the University of Cambridge, researching constructions of subjectivity among South African mothers diagnosed HIVpositive when pregnant. Her current research interests include the relationships between social and personal identities, particularly concerning gender, culture and sexuality, and the interplay between discourse analysis and psychoanalysis as theoretical and methodological tools for researching subjectivity. Catriona Macleod is Associate Professor and Head of Department of the Psychology Department at the University of Fort Hare. She locates her work within the field of feminist psychology and has contributed to theoretical debates around feminisms and psychology. She has published extensively in the area of teenage pregnancy, in both national and international journals. She is currently embarking on a large-scale project on public discourses concerning the termination of pregnancy. Ingrid Palmary has a Master’s degree in psychology from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Her Master’s research was on support groups for women in violent domestic relationships that she was facilitating at the time. Since graduating she has worked for the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation as a senior researcher where her research work has included crime prevention and local government safety planning, transitional and alternative forms of justice and refugee rights. She has published in the areas of violence against women, women’s involvement in armed conflict and intersections of gender and race in South Africa. Ingrid is currently completing a PhD at Manchester Metropolitan University that investigates the experiences of forcibly displaced women from the Great Lakes Region who are living in Johannesburg. Cheryl Potgieter is Director/Head of the Gender and Development Unit of the Human Sciences Research Council. Concurrently, she is an Associate Professor in Psychology at the University of Pretoria. She has a Master’s in psychology from the University of Cape Town, and a PhD in psychology from the University of the Western Cape. Prior to joining the University of Pretoria she was the Director and Head of the Gender Studies Programme at the University of the Western Cape. Her publications include issues related to sexuality, race, gender and transformation in higher education. A recent publication looks at black women’s experiences at historically white universities. Currently she is involved in a range of projects and policy work for various government departments. Kopano Ratele is a professor at the University of Western Cape where he teaches in the Psychology Department of and in Women’s and Gender Studies. He is editor of Social

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Psychology: Identities and Relationships (2003) and Inter-group relations: South African perspectives (2006). Tamara Shefer is director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Programme and is a Professor of Psychology at the University of the Western Cape. She has been co-editor on two other local texts, Contemporary issues in human development, and Discourses on difference, discourses on oppression, and has published widely in the areas of sexuality, HIV/Aids and gender and psychology. Estian Smit is a PhD candidate in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of the Western Cape, has a background in philosophy, currently works on issues of body diversity in relation to South African law and does not belong to any particular sex or gender. Estelle Zietkiewicz practices in psychology and currently lectures in the Department of Psychology at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her research interests include the articulation of discursive epistemology and praxis.

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Abbreviations and acronyms

ANC APA

African National Congress American Psychiatric Association

BC BPC

Black Consciousness Black People’s Convention

CSVR

Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation

DRC DSM

Democratic Republic of Congo Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

FAMSA

Family and Marriage South Africa

GID GIDAANT

Gender identity disorder Gender identity disorder of adolescence or adulthood, nontranssexual type

HBIGDA

Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association

ICD ICTLEP ISOSA

International Classification of Diseases International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy Intersex Society of South Africa

LGBTI

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender and intersexual

MDI MTF

Material-Discursive-Intrapsychic Model Male-to-female

NEPAD NGO NUSAS

New Partnership for Africa’s Development Non-governmental organisation National Union of South African Students

PMDD PMS PMT PND

Premenstrual dysphoric disorder Pre-menstrual syndrome Pre-menstrual tension Postnatal depression

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PSYSSA PTSD

Psychological Society of South Africa Post-traumatic stress disorder

RLE

Real-life experience

SADF SAJP SASHA SASO SDF SIT SOC SPSMM SRS STI

South African Defence Force (now South African National defence Force, SANDF) South African Journal of Psychology South African Sexual Health Association South African Students’ Organisation Social Democratic Federation Social identity theory Standards of care Society for Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity Sex reassignment surgery Sexually transmitted infection

TRC

Truth and Reconciliation Commission

UNHCR

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

WHO

World Health Organisation

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Section 1

(Re)production of knowledge in psychology

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T. Shefer

Chapter 1

Gendered research Floretta Boonzaier and Tamara Shefer

Introduction This chapter reflects on the sexist nature of the majority of psychological research, highlighting the way in which psychological knowledge production has historically served the interests of particular dominant groups in societies, and legitimated and rationalised hegemonic understandings of the world. Some key examples of gendered and racialised psychological knowledge are provided. The chapter further provides a critical overview of research methodologies in psychology; reflects on the impact of feminist research methodologies on the broader realm of social science research; and introduces the reader to contemporary critical research methodologies including qualitative, feminist and postmodern approaches to research.

Psychological research in question Psychological research has traditionally been dominated (and to a large extent still is) by quantitative methods (Henwood et al 1998) based in the positivist, empiricist paradigm. The positivist approach reflects a firm commitment to scientific, rational and objective methods. These methods (which include laboratory experiments, surveys and standardised tests) borrowed from the natural sciences are seen as the preferred way to represent the social world. Positivist research operates according to a set of fixed rules. If these rules are not adhered to, the research is devalued as unreliable or invalid. The use of positivist research is purported to lead to knowledge which reflects the ‘truth’ of human behaviour. Many of the landmark studies in psychology were based on positivist research methods which ignored their biases on the grounds of value-free objectivity. For example, it has been

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well argued that a key theorist in developmental psychology, Kohlberg, conducted research and developed theories on moral development that reflect male and class biases (Gilligan 1982, 1987; Burman 1994). Kohlberg devised a number of moral dilemmas to assess how people think about moral issues. He conducted a longitudinal study to assess moral reasoning at different developmental stages. Based upon his scoring of the participants’ solutions to the moral dilemmas, Kohlberg developed a six-stage theory of moral reasoning. In psychology, Kohlberg’s theory has been presented as a universal account of moral development. His theory, however, has also been subject to much criticism. Gilligan (1987) for example argued that his longitudinal study was conducted with 84 boys of a particular class in American society, but that the theory was claimed as universal. Even Freud’s widely accepted psychoanalytic theories, grounded in the experiences of middle-class Austrian women at the turn of the last century interpreted by a middle-class chauvinist male, are universalised versions of human sexual and psychical development. When women’s experiences are compared to the theories developed by Kohlberg, Freud or others, they are frequently found to be deficient. Similarly Erikson’s theory of identity development has been criticised for describing a male experience of identity development which hinges around separation from others towards self-sufficiency (Beckett 1986). These and other criticisms form the basis of a virtual ‘attack’ on positivist research methods in psychology and other social disciplines that assume ‘truth’ and universalistic understandings of human behaviour. Traditional psychological research has been criticised for a number of reasons. First, the research process dictates that generalisations are made to various populations based on the findings of positivist research projects. The findings from mostly white, middle-class, heterosexual males are generalised across time and space. As a consequence, the experiences of women (and others on the fringes of society) are marginalised. The knowledge derived from these methods, rather than being representative, is male-oriented and specific. Furthermore, when women are studied or represented in research, either as subjects or objects of study, it is assumed that they form a unitary group. Differences between women, nowadays assumed and foregrounded in feminist research and theorising, have been largely ignored in psychology. Psychological research, which still attempts to package identities, believing it can ‘control’ for gender or class or ‘race’, has tended to ignore contemporary arguments ‘that “race”, class, gender and other differences interact in ways that construct very different lived experiences’ (Shefer 1997: 85) and therefore psychological realities for people. Research embedded in a positivist paradigm also endorses individualism – it studies individual behaviour devoid of social, political, cultural or historical context. This bias towards individualism minimises the social context and therefore obscures oppressive systems (Wilkinson 1996). For a long time, psychology as a science did not significantly challenge oppressive social systems such as apartheid in South Africa and worked within it to maintain the status quo. Furthermore, positivist methods are inherently hierarchical and the researcher’s power is not acknowledged or theorised sufficiently (Crawford 1995). The positivist researcher is supposed to maintain a distanced and objective stance vis-à-vis the research ‘subjects’. A power imbalance between the researcher and the research ‘subjects’ is a fundamental function of positivist research. However, as the researcher is the one who decides on the topics, interacts with the participants and constructs an interpretation of the results, her or his subjectivity cannot be denied.

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UNCHR/F. Pagetti

Zenzo

Gendered research

Feminist debates on difference and equality have destabilised the notion of ‘women’s experience’, calling into question notions of unitary female experience or identity.

The critiques levelled at traditional psychology have called into question the basic foundations of psychology as a science – which is premised on the grand theories we used to describe human behaviour. As a result, a re-visioning of the foundations of psychology has occurred along with a consequent modification of the research tools. Parallel to these critiques, qualitative methods have emerged as a valid form of scientific inquiry in its own right.

Qualitative research Qualitative research is mainly concerned with the role of interpretation and the central role of the researcher (Banister et al 1994). Interpretation, as the core of qualitative research, focuses on the meaning of human experience. The focus is thus on understanding human experience rather than explaining and predicting behaviour in mathematical/statistical language. It is also acknowledged that meaning and behaviour occur within particular social and historical contexts. Denzin (1998) noted that qualitative research inescapably involves interpretation, because nothing speaks for itself. Qualitative interpretations are not inherent in the research texts but are constructed by the researcher. Thus, the role of the researcher as ‘interpreter’ is fundamental. Due to the central role of the qualitative researcher, it is necessary to acknowledge the particular positions from which she or he interprets experience and constructs meaning. Rather than attempting to minimise researcher bias, qualitative approaches acknowledge that we are not removed from the contexts we study. Researchers are encouraged to examine their roles and impact throughout the research process. Thus, it is acknowledged that a ‘gendered researcher speaks from a particular class, racial, cultural and ethnic community’ (Denzin & Lincoln 1998: 23). Reflexivity has been described as the process whereby a researcher continually reflects upon the entire research process and her or his role in the shaping thereof (Banister et al 1994). Reflexive researchers should be continually aware of how their values and life experiences affect the research process and decisions. As Denzin and Lincoln noted: The gendered, multiculturally-situated researcher approaches the world with a set of ideas, a framework (theory, ontology) that specifies a set of questions (epistemology) that are then examined (methodology, analysis) in specific ways (23).

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The researcher’s roles, positions, experiences and assumptions inform every aspect of the research process. Rather than ignore the researcher’s subjectivity, a qualitative approach encourages its acknowledgement and theorisation. From a qualitative perspective, researchers recognise that a purely objective account is unattainable but that providing an account of the researcher’s subjectivity or biases will provide the reader with an indication of how the researcher constructed her or his interpretations. Issues of power and reflexivity are also central to feminist research. It is evident that there is a vast amount of shared ground between qualitative and feminist methodologies, given the overlap in concern for both the process of research and its outcomes. It may be germane to turn now to a discussion of the latter.

Feminist research Feminist research is grounded in feminist epistemological critiques of dominant (masculinist) conceptions of knowledge (Banister et al 1994). In response to the hegemonic positivist tradition in social science, emphasising the experiences of a particular privileged group, feminist researchers utilise a variety of methods and social scientific practices that incorporate women’s previously silenced voices. As a result, there is no singular or distinctively feminist research method. While a unitary feminist methodological framework or practice does not exist, and it has been disputed that there is any method or methodology that is intrinsically feminist (for example, Harding 1987; Stanley 1990), feminist research is ‘dependent on, and arises from, a feminist ontology’ (Banister et al 1994: 137). Thus it may be argued that feminist research methodologies developed as an integral part of the broader feminist project, with particular emphasis on the personal, experiential accounts of women’s experiences and an acknowledgement of the political role of the researcher (see for example, Du Bois 1983; Marshall 1986; Mies 1983; Stanley & Wise 1983a, 1983b; Stanley 1990; Wilkinson 1986b). In general, three feminist epistemological/methodological critiques have emerged in response to the positivist research paradigm, namely feminist empiricism, feminist standpoint theories, and feminist postmodernism or post-structuralism (Banister et al 1994; Harding 1987). Feminist empiricists argue that the sexist biases in research are a result of ‘bad science’ (Harding 1994) and they assert that the methods that have devalued women’s experiences can be improved by being more attentive to women’s experiences. Feminist empiricists operate within the positivist paradigm and assert that, if science is conducted properly, women’s experiences will not be marginalised. Harding addresses the shortcomings of the feminist empiricist stance by noting that it challenges the incomplete way science has been practised and not the logic and values of science itself. Thus, feminist empiricism falls short of providing an adequate framework since hegemonic epistemological assumptions and male-centred paradigms are unchallenged. Feminist standpoint theories focus on difference or separatist notions of female experience (Banister et al 1994). From this perspective, theorists recognise that the dominant scientific paradigms (developed by men and incorporating masculine ideals) do not account for women’s experiences and that researchers should develop theories that address these shortcomings (Harding 1994). Research should therefore be initiated from the experiences of women in order to lead to a less biased view of science. The revaluation of women’s qualities and experiences contributes to the emancipatory goals of feminist research (Bohan

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1997). However, these standpoints have been critiqued for the essentialist views of gender. Feminist standpoint theorists argue that women’s experiences are sufficiently unique to justify a different way of conducting research. The third strand of feminist critique is called feminist post-structuralism or postmodernism. There is a great deal of shared ground between postmodernism and post-structuralism but in general they refer to a body of critiques levelled at traditional/dominant conceptions of knowledge/science. The grand theories (e.g. Marxism, psychoanalysis) used to describe human behaviour or the social world are deconstructed. Feminist post-structuralism is defined as: a mode of knowledge production which uses post-structuralist theories of language, subjectivity, social processes and institutions to understand existing power relations and to identify areas and strategies for change (Weedon 1987: 40–41). Post-structuralism is a body of critiques levelled at hegemonic constructions of knowledge. Forms of post-structuralism vary but fundamental assumptions about language, meaning, and subjectivity are shared (Weedon 1987). Post-structuralism rejects the possibility of absolute or static truth and knowledge. From this perspective, knowledge is characterised as socially constructed, temporal, historically specific and embedded in relations of power (Gavey 1997). Various authors have expressed the value of post-structuralism to feminist theorising and epistemology (for example Gavey 1997; Weedon 1987). Similarly, Flax (1990) argues that ‘feminist theory more properly belongs in the terrain of post-modern philosophy’ (42). She contends that feminist notions of the self, knowledge and truth fundamentally challenge the assumptions of enlightenment thought, as does post-structuralism. In her opinion, the deconstruction of reason, knowledge and the self will reveal the effects of gender arrangements. Feminist critiques emerging out of the ‘difference debates’ (that acknowledge and theorise differences amongst women) share many commonalities and are therefore congruent with a post-structuralist framework. The deconstruction of the category ‘woman’ was thought to have a negative or devastating impact on feminist politics (Gavey 1997). However, Gavey asserts that, feminist post-structuralism maintains an emphasis on the material bases of power (for example, social, economic, and cultural arrangements) and the need for change at this level of discourse (54). Feminist post-structuralism does seem to overcome the reluctance of earlier feminist theories (such as liberal and radical feminism) to deal with differences among women as a group. Both Gavey and Weedon (1987) have illustrated how adopting a post-structuralist framework might strengthen feminist theorising. The proliferation of studies addressing feminist issues from a post-structuralist perspective show how this project does not undermine feminism but results in new possibilities for feminist scholarship. For example, studies have focused on women’s heterosexual desire and negotiation (Gavey 1996; Hollway 1995; Shefer 1999), women’s aggression (Squire 1998) and narratives of romantic love (Jackson 2001; Towns & Adams 2000) or violence (Boonzaier & De la Rey 2003). These areas illuminate new possibilities for theorising, which acknowledge multiplicity and variability in women’s experiences. Feminist post-structuralism

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has become a field of scholarship in its own right – addressing the inequalities, biases and exclusionary assumptions based in hegemonic production of knowledge.

Key principles in feminist research methodologies While it has been argued that there is no one feminist research methodology, there are, however, a number of central themes or tendencies that have recurred in and continue to be areas of debate in contemporary feminist approaches to research. First, feminist research is primarily concerned with gender as its central focus and research questions derived from women’s experiences, and incorporates reflexive research practices (Banister et al 1994). Thus, much of feminist research has been based on ‘women’s own knowledge and experience’ (Wilkinson 1986a: 2). Such an emphasis may be understood as spurred on by the silence of women’s perspectives and women’s experiences in traditional social science research in which research has been largely carried out by men, on men, and for men’s benefit, as outlined above. The imperative has been therefore to redress such a context with the foregrounding of women’s voices and women’s experiences (for example, Du Bois 1983; Mies 1983; Stanley & Wise 1983a, 1983b). Primarily informed by the standpoint position outlined above, this is done by ‘bringing women in’ and focusing on women’s distinctive experiences (DeVault 1999). On the other hand, the feminist debates on difference and equality (amongst women and between women and men) have destabilised the notion of ‘women’s experience’ (Banister et al 1994; Shefer 1999; Stanley 1990). Experiences are no longer based on assumptions of similarity among women. From a post-structuralist perspective, experience does not have essential meaning and is expressed and understood in the language used to describe it (Weedon 1987). Notions of unitary female experience or identity are therefore called into question. A second concern of feminist research is to acknowledge and theorise the roles of politics and power in the research process (DeVault 1999), for ‘what marks feminist approaches out and unites them is an explicit political commitment’ (Banister et al 1994: 137). Premised on the critique of positivist assumptions of neutral and value-free research, rejecting objective science for ‘passionate scholarship’ (Du Bois 1983), feminist researchers have asserted the political role of research as a challenge to male domination and towards the goal of women’s empowerment and social transformation. Feminist psychologists picked up on these debates as early as the 1970s in their challenges to male dominance and bias in psychological research and practice (for example, Sherif 1979; Weisstein 1971). At the level of theory generation, politics are also important. Feminist researchers acknowledge that theory is gendered and that women have been excluded from the generation of theory. Works that have gained recognition and hegemony within the academy are seldom those of women (Lutz 1995). Lutz suggests that ‘there are historical processes by which subordinate groups are allowed access to writing and through which the general or theoretical value of their writing is assessed’ (251). It is not surprising, then, that historically, feminist researchers typically choose topics that are pertinent to women’s lives. Research therefore has pragmatic implications for feminist politics as well as social applicability (Shefer 1999). Third, and linked to the acknowledgement of the political role of research, feminist research approaches have put much emphasis on the process of research, in particular the relations of power between the researcher and researched (Banister et al 1994; Oakley 1981;

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Stanley & Wise 1983a; Wilkinson 1986b). The power relationship between researcher and researched has been viewed as stemming from a male model of science, for example this quote from Mangena (1994: 276–277): Despite such equality in difference between the investigator and the investigated concerning experience and knowledge, in the male-defined concept of science the investigator has the exclusive right to objectification of knowledge. His right is based on the principle that the investigator possesses scientific skill. On the contrary, feminist researchers have emphasised self-reflexivity, which includes reflections on the researcher’s social identity, investments in the research, ideological commitments and role in the research process. They have also focused on the relationship between the researcher and researched, in particular the power relations that are inherent in the research process itself. By incorporating reflexive research practices, feminist researchers seek to minimise harm and level relations of power. Politics and power are understood to suffuse every level of the research process. At the level of conducting research and negotiating access, power and politics are once again implicated. Feminist researchers attempt to address power disparities in research relationships in various ways. Feminist research: shared identity in question Early feminist approaches to research argued that women researching women would give such endeavours authority and authenticity (Lewin 1995). These arguments were based upon notions that there were distinct advantages to women interviewing and researching other women (as opposed to men researching women’s lives). However, the degree to which shared gender identities minimised other sources of difference has since been questioned. Lewin (1995), writing about lesbian ethnography, argues that: ‘… recent ethnographic writing by lesbians, following theoretical debates in feminist scholarship, has begun to consider the ways in which our differences from the lesbians we study – differences of class, age, nationality, ideology, cultural background, or race, or the differences drawn from our status as investigators – may mean that these lesbians are not necessarily “our own”, at least not in the sense that our identities and experiences share some centrally defining sameness’ (326). Blee (2000), a white woman researcher, conducted interviews with women in white supremacist groups in the United States and showed how issues of similarity (racial) and difference (ideological and political) between herself and her research participants emerged and influenced the research process. She concluded that researchers can ‘simultaneously be “insiders” and “outsiders” to the culture and meaning-systems of those they seek to study’ (108). Shefer (1999), a white, South African researcher, reflected on the differences between herself and her predominantly black research participants: ‘I find myself questioning the notion that it is possible to ever be anything but “other” to the participants of one’s research. There are so many lines of difference in the social realm, it is virtually impossible to define a group that is not “different” to oneself in at least one dimension of subjectivity’ (158). Shifts in feminist theorising have called into question notions of shared identity or similarity. However, difference is not ignored but rather engaged with through attention to the process of self-reflexivity, which is a central feature of feminist and other critical research methodologies.

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The underlining of process in feminist research also facilitated the use of ‘new paradigm’ research methodologies, such as action-research and participatory research and a tendency to privilege qualitative methods towards the goal of facilitating a research process that is not disempowering for participants as traditional positivist research is claimed to be (for example, Klein 1983; Mies 1983; Reinharz 1983). Collaborative or participatory research projects involve participants at many levels of the research process, for example by including participants as co-researchers. It is acknowledged that even endeavours such as these cannot level the power disparities between researcher and researched, as the former is affiliated to an institution, decides on the research topic, obtains the funding, and authors and receives acknowledgement and recognition for the research.

Feminist research in South Africa While there have been a number of decades of feminist research in South Africa, there have also been major debates about the way in which these have been carried out. One of the key debates has been on the issue of power and representation in research and authorship, in particular arguments about the way in which some women, historically Western, middleclass, white women, have spoken on behalf of ‘other’ women. Amina Mama argues that ‘… there has … been a Western tradition of studying “other” groups, invariably groups that are less powerful … This in itself is a dynamic that reproduces the power relations prevailing in the social realm’ (1987, cited in Hollway 1989: 8). Debates about representation and voice in feminist research, authorship and knowledge production have been hotly debated globally and locally. The debate emerged most strongly in South Africa during and following the first Women and Gender Conference in Durban in 1991 (see Bonnin 1995; Letlaka-Rennert 1991; Lund 1991; Serote 1992; Shefer & Matthis 1991). Here the focus was not only on the lack of black female authors, but importantly the linked question of who has the right to represent, speak on behalf of and do research on whom. Within the arena of feminist research methodology, the primary critique was levelled at the predominance of white women researching black women and representing their experiences uncritically or ‘speaking for’ black women (see the debates in Fouche 1993; Funani 1992; Gouws 1993; Sunde & Bozalek 1993). In post-apartheid South Africa, more black and women academics and writers are breaking through the exclusionary arenas of publication and ensuring that their voices are heard. On the other hand, the amount of writing and thinking about this issue of authorship and black women’s ‘voice’, highlights the continued challenges of authorship for women, black and young academics and writers (Bennett 2000; Boswell 2003; Fester 2000; Mama 1995, 2000; Maurtin-Cairncross 2003; Motsemme 2003; Salo [no date]; Shefer & Ratele (in press), as well as the continued predominance of men and whites in the arena of publishing, both nationally and internationally. In South African psychology, these debates have been particularly present with respect to authorship, research and knowledge production, where black and women psychologists have been widely underrepresented. The majority of those who publish and who consequently determine the parameters of psychological discourse and practice have historically been white and male (Diedericks et al 1998; Levett & Kottler 1997; Potgieter & De la Rey 1997; Seedat 1992, 1997; Shefer et al 1997; Van Niekerk & Shefer 2001). While there are clearly

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more women and black psychologists, the historical hegemony of white male voices has not been adequately challenged in psychological research and authorship. For example, in a recent paper assessing women’s role in authorship and knowledge production through an empirical study of the South African Journal of Psychiatry (SAJP) since 1994, the authors conclude that ‘the intersection of “race” and gender … continue[s] to position black women on the margins of publishing, where they constitute 7,6% of all authors in the SAJP over the last 10 years, and even in the most recent year assessed, 2002–2003, only constitute 7,9% of all authors in the journal’ (Shefer et al 2004).

Conclusion This chapter has highlighted some of the key critiques levelled at research and knowledge production in traditional psychology. In particular it has pointed to the way in which certain positivist, empiricist forms of knowledge production have been privileged in psychology, which together with the historical dominance of middle-class, white, Western men in psychology (as both subjects and objects of study) has resulted in the silencing of women and their experiences in psychology, and served to legitimise and rationalise sexist, racist and classist practices in psychology and society. The chapter went on to explore feminist research methodologies, in particular the way in which these have drawn on qualitative and critical research methodologies. Some of the central tenets of feminist research methodology, notwithstanding the acknowledgement that there is no one feminist research framework, were expounded. It is evident that feminist research methodologies have placed particular emphasis on issues of gender, women’s voice, the political nature of research in both process and output, and the consequent valuing of self-reflexivity of the researcher. Many of the concerns of feminist researchers are shown to overlap strongly with qualitative and postmodern methodologies. On the other hand, it should be noted that, while historically feminist research methodologies tended to privilege qualitative methodologies, contemporary feminist research, with the understanding that there is no one appropriate feminist method or methodology, is no longer equated with a purely qualitative approach and quantitative methods have been re-evaluated (Banister et al 1994; Maynard 1994). The chapter included a reflection on the history of knowledge production in South Africa, in particular the ways in which women’s voices, particularly black women, in psychology as in other disciplines, have been silenced and marginalised through exclusionary processes in which white, middle-class and male voices have dominated. It is acknowledged that, while change is evident, there is still some way to go.

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P. Kiguwa

Chapter 2

Narratives of gender and identity constructs Peace Kiguwa

Introduction Part of the task of constructing a discourse of gender, therefore, rests on moving from a linear exposition that sees society as shaping individuals to an understanding of how individuals shape society within a dialectic of mutual effect. Society, ideology, social power and so on, are after all dependent on human relations for their existence, despite their relative autonomy in functioning beyond the influence of any one individual (Perkel 1994: 4). One of the central tenets of feminist research concerns the deliberate and focused exploration of women’s experiences and views without imposition of any preconceived assumptions on the part of the researcher. Although there is much diversity concerning research problems that are to be investigated, including use of methods, the importance of women’s voices is considered to be of immense value to the research process as a whole. The role of narrative research and its contribution to this project is discussed with particular focus on the nature of self-identity construction that is implied in this process. Narrative allows us to reflect both subjectively and critically on events and practices and how we respond to these. The basis of the present discussion comes from a narrative study conducted by the author on women’s narratives of leadership in the Limpopo Province in 2001. Both focus group and personal interviews were conducted with young and older women in rural communities. The women had initiated a small and fairly successful bricklaying business which had expanded within and outside of their communities as well. The purpose of the study was to explore the processes of assuming leadership within the community. The chapter, however, does not present an analysis of these interviews. The focus instead is a more theoretical discussion of what is implied in feminist

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debates concerning identity and identity formation in narrative and what has been referred to as a ‘women’s ways of knowing’, through notions of experience, agency and so-called ‘essentialist’ and ‘constructionist’ approaches. The chapter discusses some of these issues and then engages with some of the central notions of narrative identity and the self as discussed in some of Ricoeur’s major works, arguing that gender and women’s studies may need to reformulate constructs of gender identity and analysis. The chapter begins by presenting a very brief overview of some of the tensions in the identity literature to date and explores the significance of researching (marginalised) women from their own perspectives, arguing that it is important to also be critically reflective about this process. The discussion then moves on to more conceptual concerns of agency, experience and what has been described as ‘epistemic privilege’ in feminist research. A brief discussion on the use of narrative is also presented, in particular engaging the focus on black women. The work of Paul Ricoeur is then introduced. It should be noted that the chapter presents a very specific discussion of Ricoeur’s work on narrative and is not therefore a detailed and complete engagement with this as such. For an in-depth reading of Ricoeur in this area, several major works including Ricoeur (1992) Oneself as Another and Ricoeur (1991) From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics are recommended. The chapter ends with a discussion of how some of the issues raised concerning identity and meaning may be incorporated in an analysis of gender identity.

Some tensions within debates concerning identity … the positing of ‘women’s experiences’ as a starting point means focusing on effects, precluding an analysis of the historical and cultural structures that constitute them (Oksala 2004: 21). Following Siebers (2004) a key issue that has characterised so-called ‘identity debates’ is the polarity of biological versus constructivist accounts of identity formation, linked in turn to further debates on essentialism and relativism. Identity as self-referential or performative, which addresses concerns of individuality, ethnicisation, and imposition or self-formation (Siebers 2004), has also been at the centre of much feminist theorising. Franchi and Swart (2003) provide a useful overview of perspectives on the self and identity spanning some of the major approaches in social science research, in particular the psychoanalytic, phenomenological, social psychological and cognitive perspectives. These varied approaches locate a self that may be both spatially and temporally bounded, a position from which we both see and perform activities. This self incorporates our thoughts, attitudes and social and cultural experiences, which consequently make us unique in the ways that we choose to identify and relate to others in our immediate world. Narrative constructions of the self provide such a position from which the individual may locate the self and others. Through narrative the person is able to situate him- or herself both politically and socially. What this implies therefore is the simultaneous social construction of identity in relation to one’s immediate context. The significance of narrative and storytelling for the present discussion on identity and the feminist agenda is related to the chapter’s focus on black women’s identities. Struggles over representation within feminist theory and debate (Ramazanoglu & Holland 2002) have seen increased literature on and by black women that have generated greater representation

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of black women (see Collins 1990; Motsemme 1999; 2004; Valentine-Daniel 2000, among others). While these works have produced a much welcome focus on the gendered experiences of many black women, certain assumptions and issues come to mind concerning broader theoretical concerns of identity and experience within feminist debates. These issues relate to the politics that surround representation in terms of adopting subjective experience as legitimate ground for validating narrative accounts. These concerns will now be addressed. Are social scientists a bit like Captain Cook? Fay (1996) recounts an old fable about Captain Cook and the misadventure that befell him on his last voyage. The story goes that on his first visit to the island of Hawaii, Cook was met with an exuberant and lavish welcome, with the natives eagerly anticipating and attending to all of his wants, referring to Cook as ‘Orono’, a term Cook assumed to confer honorary status of some kind. Unfortunately for him, however, Orono was in fact ‘Lono’, a god believed to have been exiled long ago but whose return had been prophesied. Perceiving Cook to be this long-awaited deity, the natives treated him accordingly. Both parties parted on very cordial terms. Two weeks out to sea, however, Cook encounters difficulties with his ship and decides to return to his old Hawaiian port. Having earlier experienced nothing but friendliness at the hands of the natives there seemed little cause for reservation. His return, however, was marked not with adulation, but with suspicion of ‘intrusion’ suggestive of Cook’s deception from the beginning: ‘why else would he return?’ Following an encounter on the beach Cook was accordingly attacked as intruder and thus met his end. Captain Cook’s misadventure draws an interesting analogy for social scientists: are we like Captain Cook? Do we ignore subjective accounts of subjects at our own peril? Interpretive and standpoint theories argue that this is so. However, the emphasis on experience as foregrounding forms of knowledge and self-understanding remains a contentious debate within feminist theory, one that remains almost impossible to reconcile.

Standpoint theories have traditionally expressed a major concern with the issue of ‘experience’ as a valid and authentic form of knowing, and have included knowledge derived from experiential living as a compelling and legitimate framework for theorising gender. Hartsock (1983) and Moya in Mohanty and Alexander (1997: 136) introduce and define the term epistemic privilege as a ‘special advantage with respect to possessing or acquiring knowledge about how fundamental aspects of our society (such as race, class, gender and sexuality) operate to sustain matrices of power’. For Moya, claiming ‘epistemic privilege’ for black women is only possible when they collectively acknowledge their shared and similar experiences. This enables an awareness of hierarchical social relations of gender, race, class and sexuality and how these may operate to uphold power imbalances. In this instance, when women do not imagine themselves as victims or dependents of dominant male authority but as agents of their own lives, they assume ‘agency’. Agency in broad terms may be described as the capacity to act. The emphasis here is on how women consciously re/produce their own conditions of being and assume responsibility for this process. Mohanty and Alexander (1997: 12) further conceive agency to be anchored within a ‘practice of thinking of oneself as a part of feminist collectivities and organizations’. To go even further, agency is grounded within the instability of gender norms within society, and it is through a process of narration that we mediate and make sense of these inconsistencies, facilitating an imaginative and conscious process of change.

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Why narrative? (Re)telling one’s story A narrative cannot be fully interpreted without investigating the conditions of the person in the society that produce the text (Lennox 1989 in Riessman 1993: 130).

P. Kiguwa

Much feminist literature has demonstrated the role and value of story telling and narratives in research practice (see Lykes 1997; Franklin 1997; Maracek et al 1997, Salzer 1998). These works show that stories or the act of recounting one’s personal experience provides a useful way to represent oneself, but more than this, enables one to reflect and make sense of these experiences. Through narrative we communicate and explore events as they occurred and in the process create and impose a sense of order and meaning in relation to those events. According to Danzig (1999: 118) the term narrative research refers to an ‘overarching category’ that is used to describe those forms of research practice which include ‘auto/biography, personal accounts, narrative interviews, life stories, personal documents and oral history’ amongst others. Events that may have been experienced as confusing and even traumatic become imbued with personal meanings and in turn are intertwined with personal identities. By themselves, these events may at times be incomprehensible. The process of re-representation and interpretation, however, may allow for consistency and understanding. This is perhaps due to a key role of the narrative process through performance of different identifications that enable us to live our lives in a relatively consistent and comprehensive pattern, a ‘reduction of complexity by the teller’ (Danzig 1991: 118). We may also employ other identifications in our narratives to make sense of a different and at times opposing identification.

The ways in which both men and women invest in specific subject positions is of particular interest to gender theorists.

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The process of retelling and making sense of experience and events is also a means of positioning oneself within the immediate social context. Such positioning also becomes a form of political practice. For Mulvey (2000: 885) therefore the ‘stories that we tell and those that we are interested in listening to are likely to be related to our own positions of power and of oppression’. In this way the narrative process may also be an empowering yet disempowering practice. For example, some stories do not enjoy the same equitable and supportive space that other dominant discourses do, and are therefore likely to remain marginalised and inconsequential. This is an implicit challenge in narrative research. And yet, stories implicitly have liberatory potential as well, especially if they become a group narrative and thereby generate shared action and conscience. The use of narrative and story to explore constructs of the self and identity may be used to achieve different goals in research. As mentioned earlier, narrative allows the teller to bring some sense of order and meaning to a disordered and confusing event or experience. Furthermore, the narrative process allows for an engagement with these events and experiences in a less threatened context, and may also be constructive in the revelation of different meanings and reasons for action. As empowering and liberating narratives may be however, many feminist researchers have cautioned against the use of narrative research in very simplistic and naïve ways that often fail to emphasise the crucial issues of what stories are being told (Mulvey et al 2000). These researchers therefore call attention to the necessity of critical reflection on the part of the researcher doing a narrative form of study.

Focus on black women’s narratives We are the subjects of our own narrative, witnesses to and participants in our own experience, and, in no way coincidentally, in the experiences of those with whom we have come in contact … And to read imaginative literature by and about us is to choose to examine centers of the self and to have the opportunity to compare these centers with the ‘raceless’ one with which we are, all of us, most familiar (Morrison 1989: 9). Post-apartheid South Africa has witnessed an increased liberalisation of traditionally oppressive gender norms and their effects in the lives of many women. However, constitutional change in gender laws remains to have full liberatory effect for a large number of women. And yet there is no doubt that the destabilising effects of progressive gender laws have been significant for many women, for example, in terms of access to education and health care. While such changes are long overdue there is no doubt that many women have experienced some ambivalence and uncertainty in the face of these changes. For instance, in this edition Long and Zietkiewicz discuss the tensions and contradictions of defining oneself as a ‘black woman’ as experienced by young university students. They argue that new forms of constraint are created even in the face of greater autonomy, and reflect on the difficulties of developing a coherent narrative of the self for many young black women growing up in South Africa today. Narratives of ‘whiteness’ have also been shown to embody the same forms of ambiguity and contradiction (Motsemme 2004), and are seen to represent almost similar forms of renegotiation and meanings. All of this attests to the processes of identity constructions and renegotiations that have come about in post-apartheid South Africa that are continuously being contested and redefined. The focus on black women’s narratives

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here should therefore not imply that the identity project in post-apartheid South Africa is exclusive to black women. The special locating of young black women in South Africa today, however, provides an especially intriguing and self-reflective starting point, in consideration of the multiple and empowering discursive constructs of black femininity taking place at the moment. The increase of gender-based violence in South Africa as well as increased counter-discourses that seek to undermine and challenge women’s disempowerment has arguably generated much feminist concern and debate. For many young black women in South Africa today, making sense of such readily embracing society and at the same time having to grapple with the many forms of inconsistencies within their lives may be existentially disordering and experienced as contradiction. Culturally gendered narratives may thus be important in understanding the processes by which many young black women both reject and embrace broader constructs of themselves. This last point is especially significant in terms of the present positioning of many black women in post-apartheid South Africa. McNay (2000) argues that much post-structuralist theorising on the subject tends to emphasise the locating of subjects into particular positions (see Long & Zietkiewich on ‘subject positions’) which in turn determines the degree of agency and subjectivities that may be performed by the subject. Such a theory of subjective development and ability to act is, however, conceived in terms of a lack, in the sense that one’s subjectivity is always in reaction to, that is in relation to hegemonic discourse/s, what McNay here refers to as ‘negative subjectification’. If we are, however, to explore avenues for social and individual change it is necessary that we move beyond such a construct of the self and identity. What is being posited here is the idea of ‘personal investments’ to specific subject positions that may be ambiguously experienced as personally rewarding but also oppressive (McNay 2000). The role of women in actively changing their responses to events and others within their societies is thus very important to understanding women’s capacities to act, and not only respond to social influences. Beyond Foucault and Lacan? Both Foucault and Lacan have arguably been the most prominent theoretical influences in feminist work on gender identity for very significant reasons. Foucault’s work on the discursive reproduction of the subject and power has especially been useful to understanding the durability of gender identities, and how identities may be sustained through exclusion of particular groups. Foucault’s work has chiefly been adopted within the writing of post-structuralist and some constructionist feminists. The critical insight generated within these works cannot be downplayed. However, the far-reaching implications of some of these works may be problematic. The notion of gender identities that are defined solely in terms of ‘exclusion’ for instance means that a truly open and active notion of agency is hindered. The same concern presents itself within Lacan’s theory of self-formation as constituted in terms of instability and lack (see Hook in this edition for a more detailed overview and critique). Many psychoanalytic feminists have readily embraced Lacan’s deviation from Freud’s overly reductionist approach to subject formation. However, his view of the subject is that he or she is constituted in language. However, because language is in itself unstable, it is never a consistent framework for subjective meaning. The stable subject is thus an illusory concept that is forever caught up in disruption within the unconscious.

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In both these models a dynamic and creative conception of agency is precluded, more so in Lacan’s theory of subject formation. McNay (2000) has argued this through his theory on ‘technologies of the self’, Foucault addresses this fundamental shortcoming using the notion of docile bodies, and posits a more creative notion of resistance.

The depth hermeneutics of Ricoeur Introduction: the ontological status of narrative In drawing on the work of philosopher Paul Ricoeur, and following in the tradition of prominent critics such as Freeman (1993), Moore (1986, 1994) and McNay (2000) amongst others, the present discussion now turns to an exploration of subjectivity and agency that is conceived in terms other than ‘negative production’ (McNay 2000). The discussion takes as a driving framework some of the fundamental conceptualisations espoused by Ricoeur in Time and Narrative (1984–1988), From Text to Action (1991), and Oneself as Another (1992). Throughout his work Ricoeur tackles the issue of self-understanding as a fundamental philosophical and human quest and through his narrative theory he explores this ‘hermeneutics of the self’. The idea of a coherent self that is both temporal and enabling explores subjective agency as realised in ‘creative action’ (Thompson 1981). This is largely due to Ricoeur’s conceiving of identity as neither ‘completely in flux nor static’ (McNay 2000: 89). The coherent self created within narrative does not rely on a negative construct of the subject but rather is seen to represent a type of mediation between fixture and change. Such a construct of a self that is coherent and yet continually changing presents thought-provoking and at times challenging points for discussion on subjectivity for gender theorists. Why hermeneutics? Subjectivity is … neither an incoherent series of events nor an immutable substantiality (Ricoeur 1991: 32). Both material and symbolic descriptions of subject formation tend toward a determinist account in the sense that identity in both accounts is seen to be constrained by relational (either material or symbolic) sources. Implicit within such a theoretical position is the dispute concerning so-called ‘essentialist’ and ‘anti-essentialist’ constructs of identity formation. This debate on anti/essentialism has been contentious for many standpoint feminist theorists (Ramazanoglu & Holland 2002) who have voiced concerns over the universalising trends in knowledge production that have characterised Western feminism especially. Hendricks and Lewis (1994) have pointed out, however, that standpoint theories, in particular African feminist approaches, have adopted an equally essentialist framework in relation to ‘African women’ and their experiences of gender. Mohanty (1991) has also cautioned against the unproblematic use of certain concepts and tools of analysis adopted by many ‘Third World’ feminists which inadvertently reproduce the category ‘Third World’ woman, as a distinct and homogenous tool of analysis. Accounts of identity formation which assume identity to be ‘contingent’, that is determined by specific conditions and influences representative of the cultural and social context for instance, tend to emphasise those linguistic and other symbolic forms of practice that posit

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identities as socially constructed (Burr 1995). Post-structuralist accounts of identity have been particularly significant in their focus on the discursive construction of identity, which allow us to reconceptualise traditional ways of defining identities as ahistorical and internal. Instead, we begin to observe how identities may in fact be re/produced in specific instances and always within a matrix of power relations (see Long & Zietkiewich in this edition for a more detailed account of post-struturalist theories of identity). At the same time, however, the idea of an identity that is never stable but perpetually in flux presents a theoretical dilemma for a worthwhile theory of agency. In the same way that identity formation theories posit identity to be a fixed entity that does not change (a unified self), they also fail to take into account the dynamic facets entailed in this process of formation and agency. So, how do we begin to elucidate a theory of gender identity formation that does not conform to this dichotomy of essentialism and construction? In all three volumes of Time and Narrative (1984, 1991) Ricoeur attempts a counterbalancing of sorts between these determinist constructs of subject formation through what he articulates as a ‘hermeneutic’ consideration of subject formation processes. Broadly speaking, the term ‘hermeneutics’ belongs to that field of philosophy concerned with interpretation and understanding. Ricoeur’s (1991) hermeneutic approach incorporates both ‘determinist and hermeneutic’ constructs of subjectivity, whereby identity as narrative construct is perceived to be a social construct that lacks fixity. But at the same time, given the centrality of narrative to this creation of the self, we cannot perceive this process to occur in a haphazard, almost ‘messy’ manner. In other words, narrative identity, in its moment of construction, is also constrained within the narrative (McNay 2000). Where other accounts may privilege externally imposed constraints in this process of configuration, Ricoeur argues that imposition may also come from within as well as without. This is to say that oppressive forms of practice or behaviour may at times be uncritically embraced by both men and women because they are considered to be beneficial in other

Paul Ricoeur: a ‘post-structuralist’ hermeneutic? There is no one possible approach to describe and analyse the work of Ricoeur. Some theorists have preferred to emphasise his hermeneutic conceptualisation of the self, while others have described a large part of his writings as ‘post-structuralist hermeneutic’ philosophy (Ezzy 1998), as a primary reference to the fact that Ricoeur utilises the text as a framework for meaning in which we mediate self-understanding through symbolic interpretation. Caution should however be exercised against any indiscriminate equating of Ricoeur’s post-structuralism with that of others such as Foucault. Foucault on the one hand conceives and understands subjectivity as always only produced within the symbolic form of language. Ricoeur on the other hand reinscribes subjectivity at the level of the body and the material. Language thus assumes a secondary status in this symbolic mode of constitution unlike in Foucault’s idea of subjective development and formation. One must also note that while the idea of narrative as constructing identity may be similar (the post-structuralist notion of fluid and constructed identities), Ricoeur’s conception of narrative as central to a sense of self underlies the self-continuous nature of narrative identity. One should also note that Ricoeur’s construct of subjectification as both imposition from without as well as from within implies a more responsive and positive theory of agency than is proposed in post-structuralist models of subject formation in their emphasis on subjective development as always in relation to discursive structures.

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ways. It is in this notion of externally and internally rooted constraints that we are able to conceive of alternative lenses through which to understand gender identity formation processes and behaviour, and the implications of these for a discussion on female agency. Boonzaier (2001; 2004) discusses a shift in woman abuse literature, whereby women’s agency at times includes different coping strategies that previously were seen to be pathological, such as returning to an abusive relationship. Her research shows that women may continue to stay within abusive relationships depending on the different meanings that they attach to these experiences within the given culture. In this study Boonzaier (2003: 189) posits agency as a ‘capacity of a designated group’s women … to continue functioning and cope under subjection and within abusive and oppressive relationships’. The idea of personal investment (McNay 2000) to a given position provides some insight into the persistence of some gendered behaviour and practices even in the face of resistance. The mediational role implicit in the narrative process may serve as a key foundational means through which constructs of a coherent self is realised (Freeman 1993; Ezzy 1998).

Reconceptualising the self in psychology In Ricoeur’s view, the question “who am I?” is a question specific to a certain kind of being, namely, being a subject of a temporal, material, linguistic and social unity. The ability to grasp oneself as a concrete subject of such a world requires a complex mode of understanding capable of integrating discourses of … heterogeneous kinds … (Encyclopaedia of Philosophy). Identity as temporal Ricoeur adopts an alternative view of the self that moves away from binary constructs of the self as either stable or in constant flux. If we are to conceive of identity as nothing more than fragmented constructs, continually changing, or even as category that is determined only by normalising social forces (Foucault 1988), we lose sight of the temporal dimensions of identity formation processes. These processes, it is argued, constitute a primary component of identity formation. In other words, there exists a temporal aspect to self-construction in the sense that identity is neither fixed essence nor social constructs. Instead, a sense of self-continuity is implicit within narrative. By the term temporal we may thus understand narrative identity to be functional in the construction of events of the past, present and future into a narrative whole (Ezzy 1998; McNay 2000). Stasis and change: theory of a ‘double self ’ This temporality of identity is further illustrated as a tension between stasis and change (Ricoeur 1991), whereby the two features of self-formation are seen to be in juxtaposition to each other. Ricoeur explores this relationship between stasis and change within identity through the categories of sameness (idem) and selfhood (ipse). His contention is that the self cannot be reduced to either one or the other, in any overly deterministic way. Psychological theories of identity have traditionally conceptualised identity in terms of a stable, atemporal category of sameness, whereby identity is seen to be relatively stable and unchanging, in

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other words, ‘atemporal’. However, through narrative, meaning is assigned to events, a process characterised by both change and transformation (Danzig 1999). In other words, through narrative, we are able to mediate the temporal dimensions of identity in terms of a sameness and selfhood (Ricoeur 1984; McNay 2000), and it is within this process that identities may thus be constituted. However, the narrative itself never fully achieves any real closure to the meanings we assign to events, but rather leaves discursive space for the assignment of new and at times different meanings – a description of identity that is neither completely essentialist nor constructionist in its account. Sameness (idem)

Selfhood (ipse)

❍ ❍ ❍ ❍

❍ more abstract, implies change in time ❍ constancy of the self through time and within change

implies permanence in time identity that is ‘measured’ based on a notion of resemblance not reducible to corporeal identity. Instead, an acquisition of embodied identities through processes of symbolic identification ❍ does not fully account for questions of change in time

Ricoeur’s approach to self-formation is useful in its challenge to the dichotomous constructs of so-called essentialist and constructionist approaches to identity. Through his notion of identity as both durable and yet mutable, relatedness between identities as stable and changing (idem and ipse), we are able to posit a theory of gender identity formation and agency that is both dynamic and creative. It is through the act of narration that the subject mediates the temporality of these dimensions to identity. Narrative thus links the past with the future by providing a sense of continuity to continually changing stories of the self (Rasmussen 1996). What exists is therefore an ongoing dialectic between selfhood and sameness which represent integrated parts of a whole. Furthermore, through narrative, the temporal dimensions of identity is mediated in both

Linking the past and future: trauma and narrative For Ricoeur (1992:141) the ongoing dialectic between selfhood and sameness may be described as a kind of ‘synthesis of the heterogeneous’ (In Rasmussen 1996: 165). Through narrative different actions, mediations, intentions, causes are given a sense of continuity across time. This is because the structure of the narrative allows for a chronological sequencing to events, whereby ‘character’ is disclosed through ‘employment’ (Rasmussen 1996). Inconsistencies and discontinuities of identity are given new and different meaning. However, because alternative stories may be re/told about the self, ‘narratives link events together by giving account of the intentions of the actors so that the character appears to have certain chronology’. In this way therefore we ‘make sense out of self-identity in the context of time’ (Rasmussen 1996: 165). Thus a convergence of identity as simultaneously stable but open to change (idem and ipse) is achieved. It is such convergence that McNay (2000) argues to be non-existent within most narratives of traumatic events, characterised by a split between identity in terms of sameness and selfhood.

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its static and changing form (Rasmussen 1996), whereby a meaningful order is thus brought to a flux of events through a process of grounding the self. And yet such a process also enables an exploration and discovery of other alternatives to the self (‘selfhood’) which may be free from physical and/or subjective materiality (Freeman 1993; McNay 2000).

Human action as analogous to a text For Ricoeur the text is an instance of discourse written in form. In this sense there exists a structured totality to the text which is not reducible to sentence composition and inscription of speech (Thompson 1981). Extending this formulation of the text Ricoeur introduces the idea of human action as an instance of text, one that which may ‘read’. In Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences (1981) he discusses human activity to be identical to a practice of textual reading in the sense that human action is seen to comprise a complex blend of behaviours. These behaviours are in turn imbued with meaning, as ‘an action, like a text, is a meaningful entity which must be construed as a whole; and a conflict of interpretations can be resolved only by a process of argumentation and debate, in which the intentions of the agent may be relevant but not decisive’ (Thompson 1981: 16). Exploring the cultural meanings of behaviour amongst the Marakwet in Kenya, Moore (1986) shows the use of metaphor in understanding the link between actors’ intentions and social meaning: a young Marakwet1 girl anoints herself in ash to convey sentiments of refusal and rejection to an arranged marriage. Her choice of method for refusal, i.e. being smeared in ash, is reliant on the negative connotations that are associated with ash in other contexts. The metaphoric connotations of ash exemplify how ‘metaphoric statements [and actions] have the ability to refer to meanings outside the context of their utterance’ (Moore 1986: 79). A more familiar example in South Africa would be the action of raising one’s hand to hail a taxi, and depending on the slant of hand (whether up or down for instance) this changes the meaning conveyed. Understanding human action therefore requires some degree of familiarity with the symbolic connotations that are implicit within cultures, as well as the temporal structures evoking particular narratives (McNay 2000). ‘Event’ and ‘meaning’ in discourse To understand a text is to follow its movement from sense to reference; from what it says, to what it talks about (Ricoeur 1976: 87–88). For Ricoeur (1981) human action displays both a ‘sense’ and a ‘reference’ component in much the same that literary texts do. In other words there is an internal structure (sense) to action that also includes a projection of a human world. This projection unfolds through a process of interpretation (reference). When we read a text in terms of its internal relations or its basic constituents, we follow the text in terms of its struture and we are engaged in what Ricoeur (1981) refers to as ‘explanation’. On the other hand when our focus is on the actual processes producing the text, the actualised products of social actors within given contexts, we are approaching the text in terms of reference and our focus here is on interpreting the text (Moore 1986). Through a conception of discourse and metaphor as both event and meaning Ricoeur

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argues for an analysis of action that is interpretive yet also strategic. Such an approach is, however, comprehensible only when action is seen to embody both event and meaning. To take the previous example of the young girl smearing herself with ash as a means of ‘voicing’ objections to a proposed marriage, the action or event that we observe is the noticeable smearing of oneself with ash. The event, however, would be meaningless if separated from the symbolic meaning of ash within the given culture as something negative and undesirable. Thus, the meaning and expressions of refusal only make sense within a specific cultural script that is understood by social actors participating within that culture. As a consequence of this kind of conceptualisation, Ricoeur argues for both sense and reference as equally crucial in understanding the text. Through action we are able to create, resist, manipulate or reproduce particular meanings. Actions however, are in turn practised within linguistic and cultural frameworks that are themselves metaphorically structured (Moore 1986). In her fictional work Danticat (1998) describes in vivid detail an act of resistance which the protagonist and narrator Sophie enacts against what she considers to be a culturally prescribed femininity. A femininity she experiences as both contradictory and restrictive. Caught between gender scripts that legitimate a repressed femininity as well as a matriarchal sub-system that unwittingly supports and reinforces these norms (by submitting her daughter to routine virginity testing), Sophie resists this practice in what would seem to be an overly dramatic and aggressive manner. Ripping open her hymen with a wooden pestle, she describes this thus: ‘my flesh ripped apart as I pressed the pestle into it. I could see the blood slowly dripping onto the bed sheet. I took the pestle and the bloody sheet and stuffed them into a bag. It was gone, the veil that always held my mother’s finger back every time she tested me’ (88). Unable to ‘voice’ her rejection of the tradition she is born into, Sophie’s action become a kind of resistance to, yet also critique of the gendered cultural prescriptions within her society. This event once again is meaningless when separated from the symbolic meanings that surround virginity testing practices and constructs of female sexuality. In both examples (smearing oneself with ash and tearing open the hymen), specific cultural scripts are deployed that are better understood by the social actors themselves and others within the culture. The irreducibility of the text Given that identity formation becomes premised on a dynamic unity of both essentialist and poststructuralist approaches, it becomes almost redundant to over-emphasise the one aspect over the other in any determining way. Such a formulation exemplifies narrative (in its constitutive function of identity) to be an irreducible component within this process of configuration. We cannot argue for an approach to identity formation processes that is either exclusively static or exclusively fluid. To emphasise the point further, while some poststructuralist approaches may powerfully reveal identity as a social construct, they do not always take into account the embeddeness of certain form of identities. Embedded identities are understood here to refer to those ways in which self-identity may at times remain consistent over a long time and not change in relation to different social and political contexts. Such oversight may mean that deeper understandings of why particular forms of gendered behaviour and identifications remain resilient even in the face of inconsistencies and conflict is not fully explored.

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Ricoeur’s notion of temporality and its relation to the narrative self may be very briefly summarised as: ❍ uses an analysis of narrative to develop a theory of self-identity; ❍ the self as discovered through its own narrative act; ❍ theory of the ‘double self’, i.e. identity as both sameness (idem) and selfhood (ipse); ❍ selfhood as ontologically different from ‘identity’, where selfhood implies an ability to reflect upon itself; ❍ ‘identity’ is a narrative construction that is produced as a result of this reflective process while identity is social in the same understanding argued by post-structuralist approaches – the narrative structure provides the self-concept with an added temporal dimension; ❍ identities as neither unchangeable nor illusory; ❍ sense of self-continuity that is implicit within narratives of identity; ❍ narrative identity therefore neither an incoherent series of events nor an immutable substantiality; ❍ narrative identity as coherent yet fluid; ❍ narrative identity as historically grounded yet fictively reinterpreted; and ❍ narrative identity as constructed by an individual but in interaction and dialogue with others.

Positing gendered identity: durable and changing identities The significance and contribution of Ricoeur’s conceptualisation of stasis and change as well as identity as both sameness and selfhood, pose a serious challenge to traditional constructs of gender identity formation, but even more significant to issues about agency and social change. The key question that is engaged with here concerns the issue of identity transformation and the at times perplexing issue of why some identities are resistant to change, however oppressive these may be experienced as. While it is easy to see why those doing the oppressing may not want to change, it is difficult to consider the same motivation and intentions on the part of the person being oppressed. In the first instance, the notion of identities as neither fixed nor ‘free-floating’ implies both a durability and change within identities. As McNay (2000: 93) states, ‘the self may always be in a state of reconfiguration in order to incorporate the flux of experience; however, it is not completely arbitrary or open-ended’. Thus the narratives that we may construct in relation to our sense of self may also be inhibited within broader cultural narratives. An important notion here is the idea of identities as durable and representative of a personal investment in particular subject positions and aspects of identity (McNay 2000; Moore 1986; Ricoeur 1976). Identities thus cease to be mere reflections of social structures or cultural narratives but also embody instances of individual investment on the part of the individual. We may ‘invest’ in certain identities because we perceive these to be beneficial to us in some way. However, our responses to these social and cultural contexts may become so entrenched we ‘over-invest’ in particular positions. Our experiences and subjective sense of self as a result become ‘structured’. The notion of personal investment in identity and behaviour may explain to some degree the resistance to social change within given contexts. Also, the idea of individual investment (McNay 2000) allows for a more active construct of subject formation which moves beyond

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passive formulations of the subject such as constructs of imposition from without (as opposed to within). In Ricoeur’s formulation, the individual becomes an active agent in his/her own subjectification. Furthermore, the construct of identity as encompassing both stasis and change raises another crucial area of contention for gender theorists. The debates and dilemmas surrounding ‘experience’ were introduced in the beginning of the chapter, and it is to these that we now turn.

‘Authentic’ versus ‘ideological’ experience For Ricoeur human action is in essence symbolic in form, and requiring interpretation. Furthermore, it is in the act of interpretation of action and experience that narrative acquires its centrality (Ricoeur 1992). What we have here, in other words, is a reframing of the relation between ideology and human practice, whereby meaning is not only understood to be implicit in action but must also be ‘invoked’ through interpretation. Moreover, because we are engaged in this meaning-making process, we are ourselves active agents in a construction of a given reality. If all human action only becomes significant through an invocation of meaning, and if meaning only emerges when we interpret action in relation to other events (by placing events in a temporal and spatial relation to other events), can we say that an ‘authentic’ experience exists, a ‘real’ representation of reality? This is especially pertinent in memory work. For instance, Malkki (1995) demonstrates how homogeneous and unifying group identities are created within a refugee camp amongst Hutu refugees. Through constructs of the ‘group’, ‘home’, ‘ancestral origins’ and ‘exile’ (which may be viewed as ideological) function to maintain the group’s cohesion. These narratives of ‘home’ and ‘exile’ become functional in sustaining both social and individual identities. The ideological constructs further serve another crucial role here: the concealment of any tension which may exist between what Ricoeur (1986) refers to as claims of legitimacy and the belief in legitimacy (Ricoeur 1986). Potential anxiety that is likely to arise from the claims to legitimacy in terms of refugee status is overcome through active and consistent constructs of ‘sacrifice’ and ‘victimisation’.

The role of imagination In From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics (1991), Ricoeur posits a more creative and open conceptualisation of agency through the notion of ‘imagination’ (Ricoeur 1994). Challenging conventional understandings of subjectivity as produced solely in terms of lack and exclusion, Ricoeur emphasises the idea of creativity as central in any theory of agency. Such a notion includes a process of social action that is both projected and anticipated by the subject (McNay 2000). For Ricoeur it is impossible to conceive of or imagine social action without imagination. Simply put, it is through the creative imaginative process that social action is conceived and given reality. Ricoeur (1994) further identifies four key aspects through which action may be linked to imagination. First, through imagination we are able to examine action. This is a process that entails a testing of different courses of action which may be adopted within given contexts. Secondly, this process of testing allows for what McNay (2000: 99) refers to as ‘luminous clearing’ through which we achieve further insight into our personal motivations, consciousness of possible alternatives as well as hindrances to particular forms of action. Thirdly, these

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processes of imagining and testing enable us to further interrogate our capacity for assuming specific forms of action (Ricoeur 1994). These areas of relation between imagination, testing and action constitute Ricoeur’s phenomenology of individual action (Thompson 1981). It is in the fourth aspect, that of mediation between intersubjective relations, that we find his critical hermeneutics (Thompson, 1981). It is in Ricoeur’s concern and emphasis on a hermeneutics that does not remain at the level of individual action but rather extends beyond this, to include more collective forms of social action, that his hermeneutics poses a useful approach to theories of agency. Of particular interest here is the construct of the self that is implied. Deviating from traditional post-structuralist constructs of identities that are formed within contradiction, Ricoeur proposes a view of the self that is neither exclusionary nor contradictory (Ricoeur 1994; Thompson 1981). ‘Identity’, traditionally understood to refer to a category of sameness (in the conventional sense of being similar to) as well as distinctiveness here implying difference (we only come to define ourselves in relation to what we are not) is thus challenged. Ricoeur introduces the self as having the capacity to establish an open and constructive relation with the ‘other’ which is not rooted in difference or exclusion. Subjectivity therefore ceases to be defined solely in terms of lack. We are able to reconcile ambiguity and contradiction in a meaningful and productive way. It is this creative aspect to agency Ricoeur draws our attention to. One should note here that Ricoeur in no way suggests a ‘rising above’ difference. Instead, the idea here is about accommodating difference in the sense of a continuous process of self-formation in which the individual seeks to reconcile inconsistencies in a positive and open manner in a non-defensive or passive way. In this way the group narrative constructs in Malkii’s (1996) study described earlier demonstrate the role and significance of collective imagination and how groups may relate to each other (and their traditions) ‘through figures of ideology and utopia’ (Thompson 1981: 16). Ideological constructs and utopian figures in this instance may not be ‘distortive’ but ‘constitutive’ of social life and extend to both social and individual levels of imagination.

Distanciation Ricoeur’s challenge to conventional theories of the self is better clarified in relation to the conceptualisation of agency and identity that has generally been presupposed, most especially within much post-structuralist and constructionist theories of gender. The view that there is no stable internal subject to speak of means a disavowal of the concept of ‘identity’ itself (Gergen 1985; Burr 1995; Long & Zietkiewicz 1999). The problem this presents however is a ‘rejection of associated terms such as autonomy, reflexivity which are central to conceptualising agency within discourses on gender’ (McNay 2000: 103). Ricoeur rejects this dichotomous relationship of ‘identity’ versus ‘non-identity’ in favour of a theory of self-formation which perceives these two processes to be intertwined. We are thus able to conceive a capacity for agency which is not always exclusionary or defensive. Perkel (1994) has similarly cautioned against the ready equation of gender discourses with linear and direct relationships between social structures and individual subjectivity, arguing that our focus should be on a more dynamic understanding of the relationship between individuals and ideology as mutually impactful. To move beyond this impasse of self-identity versus non-identity, Ricoeur (1981) suggests an intertwining of both identification and what he terms ‘distanciation’. Through a process of

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distanciation we suspend what we already know as a means of achieving a more comprehensive explanation of events. Distanciation links both explanation and understanding as part of a dialectic whole. In interpretation the text is approached with some prior understanding or prejudgement. Analysing the text, however, involves an explanation that seeks to determine how and why the text works. These processes result in comprehension, which is a new level of understanding that may lead to new critical understanding of the text: The first time, understanding will be a naïve grasp of the meaning of the text as a whole. The second time, comprehension will be a sophisticated mode of understanding, supported by explanatory procedures. In the beginning, understanding is a guess. At the end, it satisfies the concept of appropriation … as the rejoinder to the kind of distanciation linked to the full objectification of the text. Explanation, then, will appear as the mediation between two stages of understanding. If isolated from this concrete process, it is a mere abstraction, an artifact of methodology (Ricoeur 1976: 74–75). The significance of this formulation for a construct of gender identity formation is especially useful in light of the changing and dialogic processes of self-formation in post-apartheid South Africa, and the ways that women are involved in processes of negotiation. This includes seeking to understand and be able to explain specific events and our responses to these events. The above conceptualisation is better grasped when broken down into three dialectical processes: ❍ prefiguration (in which the subject forms a prejudgement or pre-understanding in relation to the event); ❍ configuration (in which the subject intentionally distances her- or himself from the text/event to facilitate a critical reading, in order to be able to explain); and ❍ refiguration (in which the new understandings and interpretations derived from this process are either validated or confirmed by the explanatory aspects used to ‘read’ the text). Interpretation, however, is never a closed relationship; it remains open thus allowing for future and alternative interpretations. In order to fully understand the text we must in a sense ‘distance’ ourselves from it, to be able to later ‘appropriate’ meaning. Understanding therefore includes both identification with the text, and paradoxically, a separation from it (see figure 2.1).

Critique of Ricoeur The conception of narrative identity as discussed by Ricoeur, while opening up new possibilities for exploring a non-linear subjectivity not perceived primarily in terms of ‘lack’, also opens up some areas for criticism. The obvious area of contention centres on his tendency to overemphasise the interpretative elements of self-formation to the detriment of foregrounding the influence of power relations in producing self-narratives (Moore 1986; Thompson 1981). Also, it has been argued that narratives exist as form and not only as content in producing identities. The discussion of self-formation that is produced within a narrative framework at times downplays the institutional and ideological contexts within which narratives may be constructed. However, this emphasis on the interpretative process need not be considered

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The event (creates opportunity for distanciation)

Configuration (Explanation)

TEXT/LIFE

Prefiguration (Understanding)

Refiguration (Appropriation) Confirms or challenges the pre-understanding

Figure 2.1 The narrative construction of the self (adapted from Grassie 1994)

altogether problematic. Ricoeur’s focus on authentic and ideological dimensions of experiences and self-formation brings a more critical approach to traditional interpretative methods that tend to treat interview data as a direct reflection of reality. The notion of ideological constructs that function on both individual and social levels also allow for a more active analysis of narratives that do not define the subject in solely passive and negative terms. The implications of these for research on gendered experiences, exploring the ways that both women and men at times assume specific subject positions in terms of personal investments for example, is very useful.

Conclusion This chapter has discussed some of the basic tenets of a hermeneutic approach to the self through Ricoeur’s theory of narrative identity. Several theoretical tensions within feminist theory have been discussed that are rooted in broader debates concerning essentialist versus constructionist theories of identity formation. It is argued that an approach to exploring women’s self-identity and responses to gendered practices within given contexts (through narrative) should take into account the creative and at times strategic responses to social change that may be adopted. This fosters better explorations of the ways women may not only become active agents within societies, but also helps us understand the inconsistencies of gender narratives and the reproduction of inequalities in the face of political and structural change.

Acknowledgement The author would like to thank Gill Eagle and Sue van Zyl for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

Endnote 1. Moore’s (1986) study was conducted amongst the Marawet of Kenya, focusing on the social organisation of space as a changing system of representation. Moore employs insights from both Marxist and literary-critical approaches in her analysis of the spatial text as linked to social and economic conditions that produce it.

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UNCHR

Chapter 3

The possibility of a reflective gaze: The relevance of feminist debates on reflexivity, representation and situated knowledges for psychology Ingrid Palmary Introduction In this chapter, three key feminist debates are highlighted that have been central to the ways in which feminist praxis has emerged. Although they by no means reflect the spectrum of contributions feminism has to offer psychology, these debates have been selected because of their relevance for the work of psychologists in the South African context and in the post-colonial context more broadly. I will consider the concepts of representation of the Other, reflexivity and situated analysis with reference to a research project being carried out with forcibly displaced women1 living in Johannesburg. Within the framework of these conceptual debates, some consequences of different ways of writing about forcibly displaced women, such as the emergence of single-issue politics and the ambivalence to ‘culture’, will be explored. However, my aim is not to offer a substantive analysis of these issues but rather to explore the possibilities of reading and writing the Other in a way that negotiates the politics of such an attempt. By locating these feminist principles within a contextually specific, intervention-based research project I will explore possible processes of integrating these principles into action research in the (South) African context.

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Defining the post-colonial society Literally, the term ‘post-colonial’ means after colonialism. It, therefore, refers to a political moment of independence from colonial powers. However, this definition is far too limiting as it implies an end to colonisation where it is clear that the consequences of colonial rule remain in the former colonies. These remains of colonisation include the continuing dominance of colonial languages in Africa and ongoing assertion of identities created under colonisation such as race or ethnicity. Therefore, post-colonial studies literature has tended to be a body of knowledge about the ongoing material effects of colonisation and responses to it throughout the world. In South Africa, many writers have viewed apartheid as colonisation of a special type because political independence was not achieved following the end of British colonial rule.

Background to the project This chapter is based on a research project undertaken in Johannesburg with forcibly displaced women from the Great Lakes Region. Most of the participants were from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda although some women from Congo (Brazzaville), Burundi and Uganda were included given the cross-national character of the conflict in the Great Lakes Region. The research initially aimed to explore women’s narratives of armed conflict and forced displacement within the context of dominant nationalist, ethnic and gendered discourses through in-depth interviews. In addition to the interviews2, two workshops were held during the course of this research. They formed part of a series of workshops held by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR), which were funded by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on refugee rights in South Africa. The workshops began with a video, which was produced by UNHCR, and reflected women refugees and internally displaced persons from around the world. The video began by stating that war was especially cruel to women and continued with a description of the ways in which forcibly displaced women had worked to improve their lives and the lives of their communities across the world in spite of the hardship of forced displacement. This was followed by a discussion of the video. After the discussion there was an input by a member of the CSVR on the international rights of refugees as well as the specific South African legislation that impacts on the rights of refugees in South Africa. Participants then broke into small groups and discussed three questions prepared by the CSVR staff. For the first workshop, these questions were: ❍ What are the cultural barriers in our own communities that prevent us from accessing our rights? ❍ What are the barriers in South Africa that prevent us from accessing our rights? ❍ How can refugee women better organise to access their rights? Some people attended the second workshop even though they had already been to the first workshop. We therefore changed the last question to ‘what barriers prevented us from enacting the decisions made at the last workshop’ and directed it to those who had attended previously. Feedback was given by participants in these small group discussions and the second day of the workshop focused on the way forward. The key aims of the workshop were, therefore, empowerment of women through information about their rights and brainstorming how to solve the ongoing abuse of these rights in South Africa.

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This chapter does not analyse any particular aspect of these interview transcripts or the workshop process in detail. Rather, I will draw on a combination of transcripts and available literature on refugee women to illustrate the three conceptual principles of: first representation, secondly reflexivity and thirdly situating the analysis to offer an understanding of how they played themselves out in the course of this research. This project has been selected as an example because it represents a range of activities based on methodological principles commonly used by psychologists, particularly community psychologists or those engaged in action research.

Representing the other: the construction of difference One of the central feminist debates for a project of this nature has concerned the representation of research participants. Early feminist claims that research documenting ‘women’s experiences’ was necessarily emancipatory because of its potential to ‘give women a voice’ have been strongly criticised for a number of reasons (see for example Lorde 1984; Spivak 1993). Most of the attention to issues of representing the Other have been due to the growing dissatisfaction with the ways Western feminism, which has dominated both the academic literature and the forms of activism that have been taken up globally, have represented marginalised groups of women who, typically, have not had access to processes of knowledge production in a range of settings. Emerging from this dissatisfaction – (expressed mainly in the work of post-colonial, lesbian and black feminisms (see Burman 2004 and Mohanty 1997) – concerns about representation have focused on both the question of who represents the marginalised groups of society and how they interpret, understand and frame the accounts of women at the margins. Of course the notion of being ‘on the margins’ is a complex one and needs to be continually contested within a particular context. Far from suggesting that one can only research those who belong to the same social categories as oneself, I would contend that it is necessary to consider how all acts of researching, intervening with, or writing about women necessarily involve representation. It is, therefore, more useful to consider how the account produced reflects the positioning of the writer/speaker and the always-shifting extent to which we speak (and claim to speak) from inside or outside the groups of people we represent. A significant concern with the unproblematised notion of representing the Other is that it fails to attend to the privilege of those who document the lives of other women and how this process of representation further silences marginalised women (Spivak 1993). This is particularly clear when one considers the ways in which psychologists who – by the nature of their educational privilege – often have a level of material comfort that those we work with do not. However, this goes further than simply attending to the race, class and gender relationships in our work, and requires us to consider the power inequalities inherent in all our interactions with those we see as recipients of our work. In particular, the expertise of the psychologist attributes us with the power to determine what questions are asked, what is prioritised as knowledge and what interventions need to be taken in a particular context (see also Rose 1999; 1996). In this way, issues of representation run into issues of reflexivity in a mutually reinforcing way that will be discussed in more detail later on. Beyond this, however, the idea that we can ever represent another rests on an implicit notion of objective description of experience that is, to a greater or lesser degree, shared. This ignores the extent

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to which the description or representation of a group always also involves its construction in relation to other bodies of knowledge. It also rests on a notion of language as a mediator of thought processes, rather than a mechanism by which we construct and interpret meaning within a particular series of social contexts never available to us in an unmediated way. Essentialism, critical psychology and post-structuralism Essentialism, for psychology, refers to the belief in universal truths or predictable patterns of human behaviour. It is an approach most often associated with enlightenment thinking and has strongly influenced the research methods and knowledges that psychology has produced and maintained. Challenges to this approach have been many and varied but are most often influenced by the turn to postmodernism across the social sciences. Postmodernism rejects the grand narratives and universal truths that have often been developed and perpetuated through psychology. Indeed, Parker (1992) claims that psychology is a thoroughly modernist discipline because of its search for universal mental processes. The term critical psychology is often used to elaborate an approach that emphasises the political nature of psychology, which typically has been played down through claims to objectivity made by psychologists working within essentialist frameworks. If we consider the ways in which psychology has been used to further both racist and liberatory aims during apartheid (consider that Verwoerd was a psychologist and Fanon a psychotherapist), it becomes difficult to ignore that psychology has a politics.

What is already implicit in this discussion is that many of the critiques that have been developed of mainstream representations of women have stemmed in part from the ‘essentialising’ notion that women are an already constituted group outside of the social and historical institutions in which they are located (such as the family, the workplace, etc). The problems with this notion of the always already constituted woman, as they relate to ‘Third World women’, have been well documented by Mohanty (1993). She notes the ways in which Western feminists, in spite of their attention to the dilemmas of representation in Western contexts, have at times produced representations of ‘Third World women’ that are not dissimilar to those of early colonial theorists because of the ways in which they work to essentialise Other women. She traces how, in a particular series of writing on ‘Third World women’, they are presented in terms of their object-status albeit with the most benevolent intentions. Through simple expressions such as ‘traditional societies’ (and here we would add ‘culture’ – see the section below), ‘Third World women’ are reproduced as politically immature and in need of being taught ‘real feminism’. One of the main ways in which this happens is through the substitution of biological markers with sociological ones where women are represented as homogeneous as a result of their shared oppression rather than their shared biology (Mohanty 1993). In spite of the rejection of the (nowadays) unpopular notion of biological determinism, the essentialising consequences of these sociological accounts remain the same. By producing ‘Third World women’ as an already constituted group (in this case as victims of ‘Third World men’) outside of their social and economic circumstances the accounts of some feminists have worked to essentialise Other women’s oppression and locate it in their gender rather than in social and economic institutions and material realities. In other words, the consequence of such writing is that it theorises all women in the ‘Third World’ as victims of race, class and gender and, as a result, what remains is then simply to apply this victimisation to different settings.

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This denies the ways in which women are not simply located in social institutions such as the family, but are produced and constructed in and by them. Thus, the central defining feature of the ‘Third World woman’, as reflected in this kind of writing, is her victim status – a notion not unlike early colonial representations of the ‘Third World women’. Thus Spivak’s (1993) purposefully crude formulation reflecting the images of colonial conquests in the third world: ‘white men are saving brown women from brown men’, far from being a relic of colonial times critiques the ways in which even overtly feminist writing has portrayed Other women. This formulation is equally present in current Anglo-American rhetoric on the war in Iraq where the oppression of Iraqi women has been a central legitimising discourse for their invasion of Iraq. Similar dissatisfaction with this notion is expressed by Audre Lorde (1984) in an open letter to Mary Daly where she notes how (in her book Gyn/ecology) Daly attends to black women only with reference to female genital mutilation with no reflections of symbols of the powerful woman that she includes from Western women. Each of these examples sets up Other women (black, poor, ‘Third World’) as oppressed in relation to an unproblematised (and equally essentialised) norm of the Western enlightened woman. In addition, this oppression is located within the context of the Other women (it is her men/government that are the source of the oppression). The ways in which this fails to attend to the geo-politics of inequality furthers the legitimation of imperialist agendas will be discussed in the final section. Returning then to our analysis of refugee women, this discussion begins to highlight both the political consequences of the account of the ‘refugee woman’ being produced, as well as the importance of attending to how women’s self representation is negotiated within narratives that are co-produced in relation to dominant discourses of refugee women. It becomes increasingly pertinent to consider how ‘the refugee woman’ is produced through accounts in the literature, the asylum process, and/or the kinds of interventions that are designed in order to consider the consequences of how the Other is represented. Far from attempting to produce an account that more clearly engages with ‘making refugee women’s voices heard’, we should rather consider what historical conditions have allowed for the dominance of a particular representation of ‘the refugee woman’ and the political consequences of this representation. This therefore implies the need to reflect on what information we make available and to see any act of representation as a politically located work. As an example, consider the following examples from UNHCR documents. The first was from the front page of the UNHCR website and showed a photographic exhibition produced for World Refugee Day, which had the theme ‘Refugee Women’ in 2001. The photographs represented refugee women from a range of geographical and social contexts engaged in a variety of (entirely domestic) everyday activities. Women and girls make up 50% of the world refugees and they are clearly the most vulnerable (UNHCR 2001a: www.unhcr.ch). Similarly, the video used for the workshops described for the project above begins with the statement that war is particularly cruel to women. Both of these statements appeared with no further explanation on the nature of that unique victimisation. Only in a broader context where women are taken to be uniquely vulnerable as a result of an essentialised oppression can this kind of analysis be rendered possible. Although in both cases the purpose of these statements was to argue for greater, and improved, service delivery for women, this is argued

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on the basis of their being women (in some essential way) rather than because of the ways in which the institutions that regulate asylum and the services delivered to asylum seekers and refugees have disadvantaged women in a range of contexts. Where attention is paid to the context of women’s victimisation and disadvantage, this is again seen as common across all contexts and institutions to all displaced women. For example, a range of UNHCR news articles state the following: In any refugee population, approximately 50% of the uprooted people are women and girls. Stripped of the protection of their homes, their government and often their family structure, females are particularly vulnerable (UNHCR 2001b: www.unhcr.ch). Mothers and children are the ones who bear the brunt of war whether injured, displaced, traumatized or killed, according to a report by Save the Children released Tuesday (World News, 2004: www.unhcr.ch). Although in this case, the reason for women’s unique victimisation is expressed as being a result of her position within the family (as mothers, or as members without family protection), this is taken to be common to all settings in which women are displaced. The consequence of this kind of essentialist analysis is that, far from analysing the ways in which family structures and different positioning of ‘women as mothers’ in different societies have resulted in women’s marginalisation and exclusion, these statements slide into the belief that it is being a (universal) woman that renders one vulnerable. In addition, this wards off a more politically grounded analysis of the ways in which international legislation and procedures for identifying and documenting refugees may construct certain refugees as more deserving than others thus rendering others more vulnerable. This is an analysis that cannot take place outside of the context in which the ‘woman’ is produced: What is problematical, then, about this kind of use of ‘women’ as a group, as a stable category of analysis, is that it assumes an ahistorical, universal unity among women based on a generalised notion of their subordination. Instead of analytically demonstrating the production of women as socio-economic political groups within particular local contexts, this analytical move – and the presuppositions it is based on – limits the definition of the female subject to gender identity, completely bypassing social class and ethnic identities (Mohanty 1993: 207). In addition to the class and ethnic differences that shape displaced women’s construction, national alliances and international relations determine the boundaries of the category refugee. Attention to these can help to break down the different ways that gender oppression manifests itself. This begins to touch on a notion central to some post-structuralist writing which suggests that we need to attend to what the work doesn’t say as much as what it does say (Foucault 1980). Here Spivak’s (1993) critique of the work of Foucault is pertinent. She wonders how it is possible, with all his attention to continually negotiated power and the complexity with which he explores the construction of modern day notions of the West, that he is able to locate this imagery of the West in the reconstruction of mental health in the early 1800s without any attention to the role that colonial conquests and the construction of those who

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fall outside of the West may have played in the emerging notion of the West (see also Said 1993). Rather, the colonial project can be seen as a subtext in the history of Europe in spite of how dominant accounts ignore this. In the above examples, it is through the failure to attend to the varied ways in which women experience war and displacement, and their shifting, continually negotiated and resisted positioning within the family, that results in the construction of an essentialised, only ever oppressed, and uniquely victimised refugee woman. Of course one can justifiably argue that every representation is only one of many possible representations and that no writer can write aspects of displacement that they do not know. Nor can every possible representation be presented. This is true but the problem with the above representations is that they function to produce familiar effects by representing the refugee woman (which can equally be read as poor, ‘Third World’, black) within a global system where this representation has served the interests of dominant groups. In addition, it is the failure to consider the complexities of certain women’s social positions, resistances and actions whilst recognising these in other women that has often worked in the South African situation to reproduce racist representations of black women. Thus, returning to our examples, rather than showing how, in particular contexts, a range of institutional, humanitarian and local practices and institutions function to render refugee women vulnerable, it is their gender that is taken as adequate evidence of special vulnerability across all national, class, ethnic and religious contexts. Women who are displaced are therefore represented as monolithic and homogeneous. Hyndman (1998), in her analysis of UNHCR conceptualisations of gender and culture, highlights how these concepts are either used to essentialise ‘woman’ and ‘culture’ in the early stages of programme planning or to minimise the implications of difference by focusing on the integration of women into programmes and encouraging their greater participation. I would argue, in addition to this, that the above examples are a useful indication how the structure and functioning of a range of programmes such as local NGO programmes, international refugee legislation and UNHCR policies function to identify and recognise those deserving of intervention. In this sense, an analysis of how the profile of the ‘deserving woman’ is constructed would allow us to consider the political consequences of dominant ways of representing refugee women. If we consider statements from the photographic exhibition above, this would be the self-sacrificing woman/mother, dedicated to her domestic duties and victim of male wars. Of course a primary contribution of French theorists in particular is to highlight the emancipatory possibilities that come from knowing society’s Other by uncovering alternative histories (and indeed geographies) of those silenced by mainstream discourse. Thus, the increasing emphasis on localised analysis and specificity needn’t work in opposition to the formation of alliances between women in spite of their differences (a topic we return to later on). However, this discussion suggests how difficult our own contested positioning within the mainstream makes such an analysis and how difficult it is to avoid the ‘ferocious, standardising benevolence of most US and Western European human-scientific radicalism’ (recognition by assimilation) (Spivak 1993) in order to avoid a construction of the refugee woman that doesn’t simply cohere with the imperialist subject constitution. Perhaps one of the areas of work which best highlights the failings of an essentialist analysis is in relation to ‘culture’ and in particular the ways in which recourse to culture

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tends to ride on the back of (naturalised) gendered understandings. Consider the following examples, also taken from UNHCR documents. While displacement creates obstacles to empowerment for refugee women, it also creates opportunities. Every day, displaced women and returnee women overcome traditional roles that inhibit their participation in economic and political life, challenging customs and traditions out of sheer necessity, in order to continue to provide for themselves and their families (UNHCR 2001c: www.unhcr.ch). Failure to utilise the existing networks of female health practitioners in refugee communities has caused a variety of problems. For example, a number of programmes have trained refugee men to serve as medics but then find that the trained personnel leave the camps. Some seek resettlement abroad; others are conscripted to serve as medics in the military forces. By contrast, women health workers tend to be not only more appropriate practitioners but also more stable members of the community. Recruitment of refugee women to become health workers is thus essential to the operation of health services (UNHCR 1991: www.unhcr.ch).

UNHCR

These extracts reflect ambivalence to ‘culture’ that can only emerge when documenting a way of life that is taken to fall outside of the norm or when attending to ‘difference’. On the one hand, ‘culture’ is seen as a constraint to women so much so that war can even be framed as positive because it requires women to ‘overcome traditional roles’ and ‘challenge customs and traditions out of sheer necessity’. On the other hand, it is seen as an asset whereby women, because of their (essential) stability, lack of opportunities to move out of camp

The ‘aid worker’ is assumed to be unfettered by culture, educated in politics and emancipated. How is it that culture is (re)produced through the essentialising narrative that sets up the non-refugee Western aid worker as free from cultural constraints?

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situations and inability to obtain resettlement abroad, make (economically) more suitable health professionals in camps. Thus, although each statement gives a seemingly different viewpoint on the issue of ‘culture’ the effect of both is the same in significant ways. Both identify culture as something that requires negotiation during the provision of aid because of the location of the aid workers outside of that culture. This identifies another woman: the aid worker, unfettered by culture, educated in her politics and emancipated. Thus, the debate centres on whether culture is a hindrance or an asset to aid delivery, rather than on what practices that affect women’s lives are defined as cultural and how these sites are contested and negotiated (see also Hynman 1998). Or, alternatively, how it is that culture is (re)produced through the essentialising narrative that sets up the non-refugee, Western aid worker as free from cultural constraints? This leads clearly into a debate on reflexivity, which has been simmering under the surface of this discussion on representation.

The myth of the transparent intellectual: locating ourselves in the research This discussion of representation has suggested that one of the issues central to how the Other is represented is that of locating ourselves within the process of knowledge production. This requires us to reject the notion of knowledge production as an objective search for facts and instead consider the ways in which all interviews, focus groups, workshops and other sources of knowledge production (both qualitative and quantitative) are a co-production. Although this is often stated within research, too often feminist research begins with a disclaimer or self-disclosure about one’s own subjectivity (usually read off as a list of white, black, lesbian, heterosexual, middle class, etc.) only to continue with the presentation of one’s work as if unfettered by this self-disclosure. Thus, the myth of research as a process unrelated to one’s own social positioning remains. Attempts to analyse how one’s own subjectivity might work to render a particular account dominant is far less common but central in South African social interventions, where a range of colonially constructed identities continue to shape the production of knowledge. In the light of the above discussion on representation, I wish to consider how one can pay attention to one’s own position as researcher in ways that deal with the complexities of subjectivity. It is perhaps useful to consider the different ways in which subjectivity is embodied (such as through race or gender) and institutionalised (such as the psychologist or expert, the person who negotiated the funds for the research, who reports on it and who sets the timetable for it), as a mechanism for attending to the range of complex subject positions present in any intervention. Each of these are ways of paying attention to the power relations in the research process as well as considering how subjectivity and the associated privileges and inequalities are negotiated in the research process. Of course some positions are traditionally more implicit than others. It is very difficult as a researcher to deny one’s embodied subjectivity, but it would be misleading to see this as the only form of power inequality within the research relationship or to see it as uncontested and stable. However, it is common in various contexts to ignore the institutional privileges that come with being the psychologist (thus rendering them implicit and invisible). If we consider the workshops described in the case study above, we can see that funding for the activities was controlled by UNHCR within the context of the funding proposal submitted by the NGO, and the agenda was set in advance by the NGO. Although, as with most

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workshops, some discussion was held about what would be included during the workshop and the expectations of the participants, changes to the agenda never changed the substantive topics for the workshop. Indeed, they could not because the agreement made in advance with the donor meant that this was not possible even if one of the workshop participants had felt able to suggest this. This is not substantively different from the interview or focus group where the issues to be discussed, even in the most open-ended of research, are structured by the research objectives and the expectations of the researcher. Consider the following extract from one of the interviews where this is negotiated: Ingrid:

M.C: Ingrid: M.C: Ingrid: M.C: Ingrid: M.C:

Ingrid: M.C Ingrid: M.C:

Um (2) one of the things we’ve started asking women who’ve been coming in is something about what was happening in their home country? How was it that they came to South Africa? Their story about that. OK, about the violence back home, always you will find violence um trouble. We are talking about South Africa I think? Well, and also about the violence that happened in Rwanda and how Rwandan refugees came to be in South Africa. Mmm. So where can I start with the war or about private life. With the war? With the war. But also about private life because that’s relevant (laughs) you know. OK Let’s start about the war and then we’ll reach here in South Africa where we have individual and I’ll talk about my experience or about the experience which I’ve heard from other people? OK both actually I mean it’s … (Laughs) So start where you like. Lets start with your experience. (laughs) With my experience. OK I myself like uh in 1994 I was in Rwanda and …

This extract is useful because it shows a more overt negotiation of an issue that is often implicit but always present in the interview process, that is, the negotiation of what counts as ‘proper’ information for the purposes of this research. Despite the attempts to emphasise that she should ‘start where she likes’, interactions such as these are a reminder that the interviewer carries the power of the expert and the judge of the quality of the interview. Indeed, the suggestion that she should ‘say what she likes’ is somewhat disingenuous as it denies that there was a clear purpose to the research. Rather, these kinds of statements give the illusion of an equitable research relationship driven by the participants which ultimately serves to mask the power that we have to represent aspects of her testimony as ‘proper’ knowledge or useful information. Therefore, one should not imagine that it is possible to be transparent, or that we can refuse to adopt the position of judge, referee or universal witness (Spivak 1993). Neither can we ever refuse the institutional privileges of power as described above. Spivak (1993) reminds us that transparency marks the place of interest and that the ‘transparent’ intellectual belongs to the exploiters side of the international division of labour. Once more we see here the ways in which issues of reflexivity and representation slide together. Claims to transparency have been central to the (re)production of representations of refugee women as an already constituted (victimised) group without insight into how this construction reflects the historically embedded subjectivity of those constructing this knowledge. Thus:

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Every claim to objective truth is also simultaneously the reflection of the historicallyembedded subjective position of the researcher in what they are studying … what we find and the sense we make of it are always a function of what we thought we would find and the position we try to make sense of it from (Parker 2005: 3). What is already implicit in this discussion is that reflexivity is not an individual act of self-disclosure. As much as it may have to do with our memories and feelings during the research, the notion of memories and feelings being located within the individual outside of historical, social and political processes that are negotiated in our relationships with others needs to be problematised. Thus, the assumption that the self should be the starting point for reflexivity is in itself problematic in its tendency to lead to what Burman (2004) refers to as ‘a tactic of individualism that either insinuate(s) or only apologise(s) for a political stopping point’(5). Considering reflexivity in this way means that it is not simply a confession (usually written in the first person) but a reflection on the social relations that enable people to experience themselves in a particular way. Thus, it is not simply a statement of who I am (white, South African, young, a woman) although, of course, this is a starting point for reflexivity; rather, it is a consideration of how these identities are brought to the fore or hidden in the research process and how they have been historically produced in a way that makes them central to the topic I am trying to understand. It is the historical significance of my ‘whiteness’ and how, in a settler society such as South Africa, it has come to define the norm or ‘centre’ for interpretation that requires analysis. Not to do this would, as in much of the research mentioned so far, render whiteness (and the other subjectivities I bring to the research) the norm in relation to which the refugee woman is produced. Of course this argument also extends to the self-presentation of those who formed part of the interviews for this project. The notion that we can simply document refugee women’s experience fails to attend to the ways in which such self-presentation is produced in the process of the interview. This, therefore, highlights the need to consider more critically the notion of women’s ‘experience’, given the central place it is given in liberal notions of empowerment. One of the early challenges to the reification of experience has been Haug’s (1992) memory-work. She and her colleagues present a methodology for doing memory-work which recognises that ‘as experts on their own experience the individual women are both ‘producers of ideology’ and are the only ones who “know” how they did it’ (Haug 2000). Key to memory work is the process of writing in the third person to allow sufficient distance from the ‘experience’ to allow the person to collectively with other members of the group consider how that ‘experience’ or form of subjectivity came about (Haug 1992). Thus, just as the subjectivity of the researcher requires reflection, so does that of the participants. The tendency to valorise the concrete experience of the oppressed while recognising the complexity and contested nature of ‘our own experiences’ results once more in an essentialised representation of the ‘refugee woman’. One example I was faced with during this research concerned a dilemma in selecting a translator for the interviews that were done in Kinyarwanda. The translator who seemed most competent was male, but I was strongly advised against using a male translator for interviews with women. Usually the reason offered for this was that women would not feel comfortable to speak in front of a man – in particular as some of their narratives may contain accounts of sexual violence. This ignored the complexity of the racial, language

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and class inequalities that already existed between the women and myself, and presented gender as a singular identity – thereby implying some shared experience (of male violence). Clearly all these intersecting subjectivities impact on what women say in the interview and shapes the meaning they make of their narrative. It is, therefore, central in all projects to consider the kinds of accounts that are co-produced, at least in part, as a result of the subject positions of the researcher/facilitator and to allow this to inform the ways in which those we seek to know are represented. This leads into another related issue that is raised in this illustration, that is, the problem of single-issue politics. The way in which gender was seen as the central defining feature of ‘working with women’ over and above other differences returns us to the problems of essentialism discussed earlier. Only if we assume being a woman to be a common universal experience can we assume that it is enough to create an environment where there will be mutual cooperation and sufficient solidarity to encourage disclosure by participants. But this extends beyond the issue of reflexivity to considering how we analyse material that has been produced by a project that has gender as its central defining feature. Consider the following extract: MR: Speaks in French. Interpreter: Her daughter was kicked out of the boarding school because she you know she – her daughter – has her mother’s name. Ingrid: Yes, yes. Interpreter: And the mother’s name is a Rwandese name, so when they found out that she was kicked out. Ingrid: She was out. M.R: Speaks in French. Interpreter: So she went to see the Bishop (names the bishop). MR: Speaks in French. Interpreter: So so they asked him to call him the director of the school you know the governor and told them that. In Congo, it’s you know it’s everything you know it’s patriarchal you know it goes on the father’s side. Ingrid: Yes. Interpreter: Not on your mother’s side, so therefore you know she (Marie’s daughter) is a Congolese because her father was a Congolese, not because you know her mother is. Ingrid: Yes. MR: Speaks in French. Interpreter: So she asked her daughter to you know for a name change, but her daughter refused that it would be changed.

Earlier in the interview, MR. had given an explanation of the conflict as being between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda. This fits with most dominant narratives of the source of the conflict and could be taken as the end of the explanation. However, attending to narratives such as the one above raises interesting possibilities for analysis. First, this extract shows how gender is central to maintaining the ethnic identities on the conflict (Hutu and Tutsi). It shows the central role of family norms (in this case the child taking the ethnic identity of the father and the identity of the mother being subverted to that of the father) in maintaining the notion of a ‘pure’ ethnicity. In addition, the daughter’s refusal to change her name in

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spite of the dangers she faced because of it highlights the potential role that resistance to patriarchal structures such as the family has to disrupt ethnic subjectivities. However, what is important for any analysis of this nature is to attend to the complexity of women’s ongoing negotiation of gendered institutions such as the family and the nation-state. Thus, moments of accepting and rejecting these norms are evident in this narrative and it is this complexity that is vital to explore. Also, this account needs to be read within the context that it was produced. In South Africa there exists a dominant reading of the Rwandan conflicts that emphasises the 1994 genocide and understands it as an ethnic conflict. Thus, a narrative that produces a different understanding, such as one that locates this conflict in a colonial project that used racial profiling to legitimise inequality (see Mandani 2001), is likely to be more difficult to express in an interview process based on asylum seeker accounts. This leads to the final aspect of this paper, that is, developing a situated account.

Developing a situated account (and recognising a partial reading) The above discussion suggests that not only are all readings of texts or analyses of social conditions, partial readings, but they also have a range of political and social effects. Heckman (1997) credits feminist standpoint theory developed by Nancy Hartsock in the 1980s with initiating the discussion of situated knowledges, that is, the recognition that all knowledge is situated and perspectival. This is clearly central to the above discussion on representation and reflexivity, as reflection on the position from which knowledge is produced can guide politically motivated representations of refugee women. Indeed, one of Hartsock’s first contentions was that the power of feminist method is the way it allows for connections to be made between everyday life and the social institutions that shape that life (Hekman 1997). Her early assertions that material life structures and sets limits to understanding of social relations can be read as both a precursor to present day social constructionist arguments as well as an important political lesson for mainstream psychology. Although feminist standpoint theories have been criticised for their realist approach, this remains a useful contention for feminist analyses within psychology as it brings attention to the political consequences of representation and, most importantly, the apolitical consequences of an overemphasis on the individual. Indeed, Harding (1997) argues that standpoint theories were an early feminist attempt to attend to structural politics of difference. Hartsock’s (1997) notion that ‘standpoint theories are technical theoretical devices that can allow for the creation of accounts of society that can be used to work for more satisfactory social relations’ (370) has therefore been central to the issues discussed in the preceding sections. All writing is political, and acknowledging this politics of representation and reflexivity puts us in the position of considering how our representations of those on the margins of society can be most politically useful. That these ideas were developed at the intersection between Marxism and the women’s movement suggests the need to pay attention to the level at which we analyse the role of broader social relations in the production of knowledge through the interview, intervention project or workshop. A key concept in Marx’s work for this chapter is his global theory, which focuses on the macro-processes of power (see Hartsock 1997). The focus on largescale social forces and the different forms of subjectivity that it highlights have been central to feminist research. Thus, in suggesting the value of feminist standpoint theory, I am not

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suggesting that there is a ‘women’s standpoint’ (that exists because it created by women who share some essential oppression), but a standpoint taken for its political possibilities as an alliance between women that does not ride roughshod over their differences (see also Riley 1998). Part of recognising the political possibilities of the representation of the Other that is produced is an attention to both the macro-processes and the micro-processes of power and inequality. The act of writing necessarily involves privileging some accounts over others and attending to the politics of this act of privileging is central to a feminist approach. Thus, Collins (1997) suggests that ‘ideas matter in systems of power’. In this sense, standpoints may be judged not only by their epistemological contributions but also by the terms of their participation in hierarchical power relations. Do they inherently explain and condone injustice, or do they challenge it?’ (381). If we consider the second extract once more, we see that attention to different aspects of the narrative (such as the role that ethnic difference played in the colonial project in the Great Lakes Region or the way that notions of ethnicity rely on particular constructions of the family for their transmission) has the potential to disrupt more popular representations of that conflict which sees it as being contained within national borders and locates it in the prejudices of those living in the region. Standpoint theories, therefore, can be seen as a response to a realisation that some standpoints have been privileged over others and can be an attempt to develop counter-narratives. Attention to such macro-politics is only problematic when this becomes turned into an essentialised, universal statement about what women really are (Smith 1997). Therefore, the dangers of essentialist theory needn’t lead us into an individualism that would paralyse collective action (Burman 2004; Hekman 1997). That feminism has focused on the relationships between everyday life and broader social processes stands in contrast to much of mainstream psychology’s concern with individual functioning. The problems of the stable, self-contained individual as the study of psychology are well documented and are perhaps the crudest example of the problems of not attending to social contexts (see also Henriques et al 1984, 2002). However, over and above this we also need to consider how knowledge generated in different contexts can be used to upset the Anglo/US domination of knowledge production – not because those in the ‘Third World’ have a better grasp on reality, but because they begin from a range of different standpoints. Rather, some level of generalisability is inevitable for feminist work (Harding 1997; Spivak 1993) that has a political imperative to avoid a paralysing lapse into relativity. If we consider once more the project described above, we see that it is shaped by a number of contexts in which certain narratives are foreclosed or, alternatively, opened up. For example, the South African policy towards Zimbabwe has been (in contrast to some countries such as the United Kingdom) not to consider Zimbabwe to be a refugee producing country making it more difficult for Zimbabweans to gain asylum3. This can be contrasted with the South African approach to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) which has been to receive Congolese refugees (who form a significant number of asylum-seekers in South Africa) and to be actively involved in the peace negotiations in that country. Thus, the very nature of who is a refugee – far from being an objective application of international law – is rooted in the complexities of international relations in a way that impacts on people’s access to services such as health, safety and economic opportunities. Sylvester (1998) considers the problems with the realist notion of international relations when she highlights how central the construction of the family is to maintaining the nation state. This is rooted

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in long-standing critiques of the mythic public–private dichotomy, in which the private sphere (belonging to women) is seen to be apolitical and ‘natural’ in contrast to the public sphere of real politics (Sylvester 1998; Yuval-Davis 1997). Thus, Spijkerboer (2001) in his analysis of women’s asylum applications in the Netherlands notes how women have typically not been seen as having legitimate claims to asylum. As a response to this many ‘gender guidelines’ for asylum determination have been developed to make the process more conscious of women’s experiences of conflict (for South African guidelines see Valji & De la Hunt 1999). In spite of this, Spijkerboer (2001) shows how this has reinforced the notion of a ‘typical woman’s claim’ usually based on a (supposedly private) violation such as rape or assisting in the domestic care of soldiers, while typical men’s claims include being a soldier or activist – thus failing to challenge the underlying public–private dichotomy. Therefore, in relation to the project being described, decisions to focus on asylum-seekers and refugees (made naively in advance of the research being conducted) worked to exclude a large group of people, defined as ‘undocumented migrants’ through a range of international and local policy decisions and to contain and shape the narratives produced in the interviews. Of course, many women who are not recognised as asylum-seekers or refugees will also have had experiences of violence and armed conflict and as such the project was shaped by the pre-constructed international order. Any act of representation therefore rests on decisions about which ‘contextual’ information frames the narratives. Framing the narratives of refugee women in relation to different kinds of information has different effects, and once more to assume this to be a transparent act needs to be problematised. Therefore, whether women’s reference to the conflict is taken as a representation of individual prejudice, or alternatively a colonially constructed narrative which is necessarily framed by an asylum system in South Africa that does not challenge this colonial discourse, has political consequences for the representation of women’s political agency which, in turn, drive decisions about the kinds of interventions refugee women need.

Conclusion This chapter has attempted to highlight the ways in which psychological practice can benefit from greater attention to three key debates that have been taking place predominantly in the sphere of feminist praxis. I have chosen to focus on these three issues because of the ways they produce intersecting sets of arguments that can have the effect of giving greater attention to the politics of knowledge production in societies such as South Africa which have long histories of very complex negotiation of subject positions. The examples chosen are relevant not only for the range of subjectivities that became evident through the research, but also because they show how all subject positions are necessarily intersecting and are produced in relation to one another.

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Endnotes 1. The term ‘forcibly displaced’ is used because most of the women were asylum-seekers although some had refugee status 2. Some of these interviews have been translated from French, Swahili and Kinyarwanda. The issues of translation are extremely complex and were dealt with in detail as part of the Doctoral thesis that this research was conducted for. In spite of the relevance of the debates on translation for the South African context, space limitations prevent me from dealing with them here. 3. In June 2002, the Wits Law Clinic prepared a test case against the Department of Home Affairs to force it to recognise that Zimbabweans had the right to claim asylum.

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V. Bozalek

Chapter 4

Psychoanalysis, sexual difference and the castration problematic Derek Hook

Sexual identifcation as mode of constitution It is useful to open with a few comments underlying the importance of a psychoanalytic perspective to an understanding of sexual identity. In her introduction to a collection of Jacques Lacan’s writings (Feminine Sexuality) Juliet Mitchell (1982), the great defender of psychoanalysis to feminism, makes the following comments: For all psychoanalysts the development of the human subject, its unconscious and its sexuality go hand-in-hand, they are causatively intertwined. A psychoanalyst could not subscribe to a currently popular sociological distinction in which a person is born with their biological gender to which society – generally environment, parents, education, the media – adds a socially defined sex, masculine or feminine. Psychoanalysis cannot make such a distinction: a person is formed through their sexuality, it could not be ‘added’ to him or her (2). For psychoanalysis, the issue of sexual difference, by which we mean to refer to issues of psychical masculinity or femininity, can never simply be the outcome of social construction. One of the reasons for this is that it is exactly through the assumption of a sexual identity – the unconscious process of taking on a feminine or masculine identification – that the subject comes into being as a social and symbolic entity. What this means is that the designation of sexuality is not something that occurs in addition to, as a kind of ‘top up’ to a subject who is already formed, it is rather the case that there is no subject prior to this process. The taking on of a sexual identity is the means through which the subject as a social being is constituted in the first place.

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We should qualify ‘sexual difference’ here: this chapter focuses on the psychosexuality of masculinity and femininity, i.e. those categories typically understood as issues of ‘gender’. Issues of sexual orientation are not discussed and the term ‘sexual difference’ is not meant to apply to questions of heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality. We are concerned here with how a speaking being experiences sexuality on the level of the psyche. Our discussion here has nothing to do with biological sex; as Wright (1998) points out, and we should be clear from the start, a biological male can function according to feminine sexuality, and a biologal female according to masculine sexuality. For psychoanalysis it is exactly through the process of taking on a sexed role that we are able to enter the social and symbolic world. If this is the case, then it makes no sense to think of a subject who assumes a given gender role, who is ‘gendered’ by a set of social processes after she or he is a socially-competent speaking agent. How we come to be ‘sexed’, to unconsciously adopt a psychical masculinity or femininity, is exactly how we enter the world of culture, rules, language, society. Put in stronger terms, the issue of one’s sexual identity is not something that is divisible from the unconscious core of the human subject. Sexual identity cannot, furthermore, be reduced to biology (that is, to the body, to various physical or genetic components) or to social construction (that is to ‘gender’, to discourses of masculinity and femininity, to various gendering forms of social interaction and practice). Wright poses exactly this problem: if sexual difference is not reducible to a biological given, nor wholly constituted by social practices, she asks, if male/female sexualities are not essential categories and masculine/feminine not just historical constructs, then what creates sexual difference? For psychoanalysis the answer to this question is to be found in a particular mode of unconscious identification made by the subject, one that locates her or him in a particular position to the socio-symbolic world of which she or he is part. It is this particular process that we describe in this chapter, and in the next one.

Problems with construction We can emphasise the importance of a psychoanalytic approach to issues of sexual difference by posing a problem. In understandings of the social construction of gender, what is it that the discourses or social constructions in question act upon in the first place? We know what these constructions produce: ‘gender’ itself, as a category of understanding, knowledge, and, typically, discrimination. What though is its ‘initial object’, the anchoring point that supports the construction of different sexual positions? What is it that makes them possible in the first place? Leader (1996) makes a similar point in a different context: to argue that a psychological feature is a social construct implies precisely that there is some natural, non-socially constructed reality behind it, something more real. This is a vital question: what was the initial ‘centre of objectification’ for the social construction of gender? We pose these questions to draw attention to the fact that we need to be wary of presupposing an unsexed object, a world before the distinctions of sexual difference. The danger of this is that we risk ‘reading back’ into such objects the sexual differences that are instrumental to structuring the social and symbolic world in which we exist. This is an obvious problem for feminism, because it suggests that we are replicating sexual difference even in our attempt to free ourselves from such categories. We should be clear here: the approach we elaborate is not one which is opposed to discursive or social constructionist

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approaches to gender; quite to the contrary, they should be viewed as an integral part of the critical project of gender studies. However, they may be insufficient on their own, and may stand to benefit by being complemented by a different order of critical conceptualisations, in particular that afforded by the register of psychoanalysis. To return to the above problem: how do we halt this infinite regress of constructions, where the very object we take as the target of gendering discourse, that pre-discursive thing, has already been constructed as an effect of sexual difference? How do we safeguard against the inadvertent ‘essentialism’ that may thus creep into our critical analyses of masculinity/femininity? By offering a substantive account of that event, or process, by which sexual distinction first and most profoundly occurs. In this respect we do well to note that for a theorist such as Lacan, psychoanalysis is not concerned with how men and women do, or should live as sexually differentiated beings, instead it hopes to analyse how they come to be such beings in the first place.

Approaching psychoanalysis Our objective in this chapter and the one following is to offer a series of psychoanalytic conceptualistions of sexual difference, not to offer a definitive treatment of the subject, but rather to provide the basis for a series of critical reformulations of how we might go about thinking ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’. These ideas, although perhaps vague at first and resistant to understanding, nevertheless demand serious consideration. The writings of both Freud and Lacan are crucial if we are to get to grips with the most important psychoanalytic understandings of sexual difference and identification. A problem is posed here, however: many of Lacan’s writings in particular are notoriously difficult and opaque. This is perhaps due to the counter-intuitive nature of this particular brand of theory; it is also due to the particular jargon it brings with it. Squabbles over correct applications of this esoteric body of thought are legion. Complicating matters still further is the issue of an intricate, diverse, self-contradictory (and changing) collection of ideas that Lacan has left behind. Wary of these problems, and yet intent on finding some point of access, we have opted to introduce Freud and Lacan, not in a purist vein, but via their interlocutors. Given the importance of a critical approach to issues of sexual identity, we have relied chiefly on a set of feminist interlocutors. In many ways this chapter is a patchwork of the contributions of a series of feminist scholars – Mitchell, Rose, Wright, Grosz, Silverman, Adams and Minsky – who have explored the terrain of psychoanalysis with the objective of contributing to critical gender studies.

Freud and forward For Freud, sexuality is always psychosexuality, the sexuality of the subject of the unconscious, as Mitchell (1982) reiterates. To fail to grapple with these issues of the unconscious of sexuality is to miss much of the complexity of what underwrites identifications of masculinity and femininity. Although it is true that questions of anatomical distinction are of great importance to the Freudian view – a view often caricatured in claims of reference to the notion that ‘anatomy is destiny’ – it is necessary to emphasise that for Freud questions of sexuality cannot simply be reduced to biology. The important distinction to be aware of in Freud’s work is

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not that of anatomical distinctions per se, but that of the psychical consequences, in other words, unconscious processes of desire, fantasy, anxiety which attach to the perception and understanding of such distinctions, particularly as they come to be understood with reference to ideas of absence and presence. So, although Freud will go on to suggest that there may in fact be certain psychical characteristics that might typically be called ‘masculine’ and others that may be called ‘feminine’, these are by no means fixed, or essential. Importantly, the meaning of certain anatomical distinctions – and how such distinctions are understood in terms of absence and/or presence – might, conceivably, be taken up differently in different contexts. We might speculate that the meaning of possessing or not possessing a penis (or a vagina, or a womb, for that matter) means different things for, say, a patriarchal versus a matriarchal culture, and will come to have different social loadings in each. (Although, for both Freud and Lacan, something will certainly operate as the ‘phallus’ in such processes).

Sexuality and the unconscious as ‘co-substantial’ in the subject Lacan’s return to Freud’s theorising will likewise emphasise the link between sexuality and the unconscious, two fundamental themes of psychoanalysis which are considered to be ‘co-substantial’ and hence inseparable. For Rose (1982) and Wright (2000) alike psychoanalytic explanations have run into trouble when they have neglected this crucial interdependence of sexuality and the unconscious. To treat sexuality as something that is wholly conscious, for a start, is to imply that our sexuality is something we have full rational control of. Furthermore, to keep these two categories separate suggests that sexuality is somehow separable from identity itself, from the most fundamental questions of who and how we are within the world. As I have already suggested, for psychoanalysis, sexuality is not something that we can put on and take off, something that we can consciously choose, or select. To make assumptions of this sort, that sexuality is separable from the unconscious and from identity, that it is something we have an uncomplicated sense of agency over, is to risk making the mistake of assuming a pre-given sexual difference that has somehow secured distinct sexual identities for both sexes.

So what then produces sexual difference? In Freud’s emphasis on sexual distinction we are focusing on discoveries of early childhood, where visible difference in the body of others (and often the bodies of other children) counts. Hence we can only stretch his ideas so far. (So, although breasts, for example, might be said to make for a physical marker of sexual difference, they are not present in the bodies of childen.) My point here is simply to suggest that there are routes through Freudian psychoanalysis that might provide a potentially anti-essentialist account of sexual difference. Questions of sexual difference (like those of sexual orientation) are elements of subjectivity for Freud that are by no means pre-determined, or somehow genetically predisposed, but are instead outcomes of a process of cultural formation in tandem with certain basic structural conditions of possibility, within the psychical domain. The complexity of this process mitigates against ideas of a pre-set or genetically predetermined sexual role. Evans (1992) puts this well: Freud limits himself to describing how a human subject comes to acquire masculine or feminine characteristics. This is not an instinctual or natural process, but a complex one in which anatomical differences interact with social and psychical factors (178).

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The answer to the question, then, as to what produces sexual difference is a complex interplay of bodies, social forces, certain structural conditions, and various psychical representations. The ‘polymorphous’ nature of sexuality Sexuality for Freud is always the sexuality of the subject of the unconscious, whose operations, of course, take place within a given social and historical context. This psychosexuality, to be clear, is a system of conscious and unconscious human fantasies involving a range of excitations and activities that produce pleasure beyond the satisfaction of any basic physiological need. It arises from various sources, seeks satisfaction in many different ways and makes use of many diverse objects for its aim of achieving pleasure. Only with great difficulty and then never perfectly does it move from being a drive with many component parts – a single ‘libido’ expressed through very different phenomena – to being what is normally understood as sexuality (Mitchell 1982: 2). Mitchell is here emphasising the famous polymorphous nature of the Freudian conceptualisation of sexuality, which becomes detached, through pleasure, from the rudimentary imperatives of biological need, which is rooted in different erotogenic zones of the body, which partakes in different kinds of sexual pleasures, with a variety of potential partners or objectives of desire and hence appears far more consolidated and stable than it is. There is very little about this sexuality that may be said to be ‘pre-formed’.

Rooted in the body: inevitable recourse to the penis? These are important qualifications of Freud’s understanding of sexual difference, but we should perhaps be wary of being too sympathetic to the Freudian view, or, put differently, we should be equally prepared to confront head-on what is most problematic about it. What we have in mind of course is the notorious notion of penis envy. Vanier (2000) suggests that Lacan’s conceptualisation of ‘sexuation’ – i.e. the unconscious taking on of either masculine or feminine subjectivity – is an attempt to correct the Freudian dictum that ‘anatomy is destiny’. We have tried to show, above, that anatomy itself is not simply gender destiny for Freud; having made this point, however, it is necessary that we remain aware of the degree to which Freudian accounts of sexual difference remain rooted at some level in the body, requiring what certain feminists (Grosz 1990) have objected to as a kind of ‘inevitable recourse to the penis’. Simply put, Freud’s initial theories of sexual difference pivoted around the child’s discovery of the fact that (for little boys) not all bodies have penises, or (for girls), that some bodies do. For the little boy, this realisation that girls do not have penises is experienced as a kind of potential loss of his own penis, hence castration anxiety. For the little girl, this discovery is experienced as a sense of lack, the awareness that boys have an anatomical component that she does not (although she has a smaller equivalent in the clitoris) which she then wishes she had, hence the infamous notion of penis envy. It seems immediately apparent why this notion is offensive to a feminist standpoint: it treats the penis, as, in many ways, the fulcrum of human identification, for males and females alike (Horney 1967; Millett 1969). (Freud uses the term ‘castration complex’ to refer jointly to castration anxiety

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in boys, penis envy in girls.) As ideologically dangerous as this idea of penis envy is, there is the possibility that it contains something of conceptual value. Furthermore, it may not be rationally inconsistent, certainly not within patriarchal societies; if this is the case then, Freud deserves to be ‘heard out’.

Sexual researchers: body as surface of experience and distinction It is worthwhile bearing in mind that Freud’s hypothetical children (discovering the absence and presence of the penis) are at a very early, indeed egocentric point of cognitive development. Thus, the relevance of external events and eventualities in the world is understood as they impact upon the child itself (hence the fact that the boy imagines that everyone has a penis, and the fact that he experiences the ‘penis-less’ body as a source an anxiety, a suggestion that he might lose his own penis). Furthermore, although it may seem absurd that the girl should want the penis (after all, she has a clitoris, just as capable of the bodily pleasure that the penis affords), one needs to bear in mind that at this stage of development both size and presence ‘count’; having something is always better than not having it; the bigger, more demonstrative organ is better than an organ which is concealed. We need bear in mind furthermore that the scenario Freud asks us to imagine is one that happens between very young children, toddlers even, who, crucially, do not approach and understand the world with the more mature and rational cognitive schemas that adults do. Here we are dealing with a very bodily-centred ‘identity’ – not to mention a state of pronounced sexual curiosity and fascination. At this point in life the pleasures, sensations and distinctions of the body prove an important ‘surface of experience’ and understanding for how the child comes to know itself and to formulate its young identity. Clearly, none of this happens outside of a social context. ‘Doctor doctor’ and ‘show and tell’ games occur within a specific political and historical situation, in which children are gradually becoming aware that differential rights and privileges are accorded to different bodies. Something like having a penis (as being recognised by adults as a little boy), for example, may well in fact connote a higher status of sorts than not having one (being recognised as a girl), at least within patriarchal societies. Also, this absence/presence distinction of ‘not having it’/ ‘having it’, potential loss/lack refers not simply at the most direct and deterministic level to anatomical distinction alone – it is not mere bodily distinctions that Freud has in mind, but (to reiterate again) the psychical consequences of these distinctions, and how they connote certain relations of presence and absence, of ‘having’ and ‘not having’, which impact on fantasies, desires, anxieties.

A narcissism of lack and loss There is an additional component to these dynamics of possession and lack (and potential loss), which we should not overlook. Freud emphasises that a considerable amount of the child’s nascent subjectivity is invested in the phallus. A vital distinction here: the phallus for Freud, in this respect, refers to the penis in boys, the clitoris in girls; it is the leading zone of sexual pleasures in the body, a zone in which the subject takes an active role in pursuing its sexual objectives, with others as its sexual objects. (At the earliest points of development both little boys and girls are thought to attain a phallic sexuality; there is, until the advent

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of the castration complex, no fundamental ‘gender’ distinction between the two, neither masculinity nor femininity has been chosen.) Here we need to emphasise again that the budding ego is essentially bodily in origin; the phallic area of the body is hence a potent element of bodily-identity, a means, we might say, of pleasurably experiencing one’s self. In this way the phallus represents a particularly powerful node of narcissistic investment, especially given the amount of pleasure it affords children, and the fact that they remain active subjects of their desire, rather than objects of another’s desire. As such a potent (and narcissistic) element of bodily-identity, one begins to appreciate why its potential loss, or its depreciation, might be experienced as so vexing for the young child. As Young-Bruehl (1990) suggests, to give up the confidence of the narcissistic investment in the phallus is to experience a huge threat to self-love and self-esteem. Laplanche and Pontalis (1973) are enlightening in this regard: the phallus is an essential component of the child’s self-image, so any threat to the phallus – or by extension, any detrimental comparison with another Other castratable objects: penis envy as template for a politics of lack Freud’s notion of castration, along with its prioritisation of the penis, has come in for no small amount of criticism, both from outside of psychoanalysis, and from within (in respect of the latter see Leader 1999; Mitchell 1974; 1982). This, indeed, is a deservedly controversial conceptualisation. I will not enter into a critique of Freud’s notions here; suffice for now to say, as Mitchell has intimated in her feminist engagement with the notion of penis envy, that psychoanalysis is an approach to the ‘history of the human subject in its generality (human history) and its particularity (the specific life of the individual) as it manifests itself in unconscious fantasy life’ (1982: 4). More directly: It is only [the theoretical context of psychoanalysis] that gives meaning to such notorious concepts as say ‘penis envy’ [or castration anxiety] – without their context such notions certainly become either laughable or ideologically dangerous. In the briefest possible terms, we can say that psychoanalysis is about the material reality of ideas both within, and of, man’s history; thus in ‘penis-envy’ [or castration anxiety] we are talking not about an anatomical organ, but about the ideas of it that people hold and live by within the general culture, the order of human society (Mitchell 1974: xvi). Furthermore, we need to bear in mind that the (largely unconscious) anxiety of loss or lack described by Freud as castration anxiety may be played out with a different set of objects; there may be ‘castratable objects’ other than the penis itself around which the dynamics of castration and fetishism play themselves out. It is important here to appreciate the psychoanalytic distinction between penis and phallus. While the penis, for Freud, is the literal organ, the ‘anatomic reality’, the phallus is the symbolic function the penis takes on. Focusing on the phallus rather than the literal penis in castration anxiety would suggest that different aspects of the self-image may be socially prized – for the phallus is not reducible to the penis. What may come to be particularly socially prized in this regard – a nodal point of social desire and individual anxiety alike – may be any of a variety of phallic substitutes, tokens of masculinity, or, in the case of racist formulas that may come to operate on a similar basis, tokens of whiteness. I need to emphasise this point: what ultimately comes to take on the role of the phallus may not necessarily be the penis, or, debatably, even something typically emblematic of masculinity. It is conceivable that blue eyes, for example, as in Toni Morrison’s (1970) novel The Bluest Eye may come to be that element of bodily-identity most prized in a given socio-historical location, and hence that facet of bodily-identity that represents the strongest concentration of narcissistic investment.

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seemingly superior phallus – represents a radical danger to this image. The anxiety and/or devaluation that occurs in primal discoveries of the fact that some bodies have or do not have penises is then rooted in two fundamental factors: the primacy of the phallus and the result of a narcissistic wound to the individual. This explanation helps broaden our sense of the dynamics at play in the castration complex, emphasising that the essential threat in question is that of a kind of ‘identity damage’ which occurs most fundamentally at an unconscious level – as a function of fantasy – a ‘wounding’ of subjectivity which is deeply repressed, and that corresponds to a sense of lack in females, a sense of potential loss in males.

Rethinking issues of castration The concept of ‘penis-envy’ is hence quite understandably rejected by many women, as is Freudian theory’s apparent centralisation of the male genital organ (and male desire) as that which structures all relations of gender. Whilst sympathetic to these arguments, Minsky (1996) attempts to qualify Freud’s concept of the castration complex, calling attention to the fact that it is, quite crucially, an unconscious process, one based on fantasy, that we have no conscious access to. Furthermore the most vital meaning of Freud’s concepts is at a symbolic rather than a literal level of application: In relation to penis-envy this means not just ‘I feel castrated and I wish I had a penis’ … but, perhaps more recognisable to women ‘Who I am has been found lacking … therefore there must be something wrong with me: I cannot be good enough as I am’. In the case of the small boy’s castration anxiety … ‘I am terrified of the little sense of self I have … being totally annihilated therefore I must continually be in control and on my guard’. It is these kinds of unconscious meanings lived out in the minds of men and women which Freud’s theory suggests we cannot ignore in our analysis of how women’s subordination within culture has come about (50–51). So, although Freud stubbornly clings to the body, and basic bodily difference as the anchorpoint of these processes, it seems that we start to discern here a means through which we might transcend this necessary limit point, which, after all, risks returning Freudian sexuality to a version of essentialism. (We say ‘risk’ here, and ‘a version’ of essentialism, because, as we hope this is by now clear, Freud does not espouse a deterministic relationship between body and sexuality, but rather a complex relation which is mediated by unconscious and discursive representations of the body alike in which symbolic rather than merely literal understandings of the body are at stake.) What do we have in mind here? The fact that we have a child subject, male or female alike, who experiences a narcissistic wound; its body must be experienced as threatened, either by potential loss to come (the actual losing of the penis in fears of castration), or by comparison (a sense thus, of lack, a ‘coming off second best’ relative to another subject). The model that Freud offers seems already to suppose the cultural over-valuation of the phallus, or more directly, the penis and masculinity within patriarchal societies. Might not something else be the phallus in different conceivable societies (see the two following inserts)? Might we not be able to transfer this set of dynamics, the dynamics of presence (of possessing the phallus), of lack (of not possessing it) and loss (the potential of losing it) into a different field of conceptualisation? Put differently, if for the moment we suspect that

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Freud is ‘on to something’ with his underlying basis of masculinity and femininity, might we attempt to find another way of articulating these positions (of possession, lack and loss) which are not reliant on the register of anatomy/biology, which may, hence, be more easily experienced across genders? The reason we are focusing so much on the above issues is that they will prove directly The phallus and other dimensions of ‘primary difference’ There may as such be ‘castratable objects’ other than the penis itself (see insert p. 51) around which the dynamics of what psychoanalysis calls castration play themselves out. If this is the case, then other elements of bodily difference, tokens of race rather than tokens of masculinity, for example, may come to play the part of the phallus as a focal point of narcissistic investment and vulnerability. Frantz Fanon’s (1986) exploration of the valorisation of whiteness in colonial contexts seems to verge on this territory. This line of thought poses two interesting questions. The first concerns the point at which we limit extrapolations from the Freudian theory of castration. The second concerns the issue of what would appear to count as ‘primary difference’ in different locations, and, indeed, whether such ‘primary difference’ might be understood in the dynamics of the phallus. Developing the point of what may count as the phallus, Freud himself emphasises the symbolic equations that play their part in the linked set of values associated with the penis (i.e. penis – faeces – child – gift), even if the penis is, again, arguably, the initial and fixed point of reference in a whole series of references. Second, Laplanche and Pontalis speak of the phallus as the symbolic function of the penis ‘in the intra- and inter-subjective dialectic’ (Laplanche & Pontalis 1973: 312), like Freud, thus opening up the possibility of an element of social mediation in what comes to count as phallic. Certain elements of social construction, of discourse, of historical context may certainly thus play a mediating role in what comes to count as the phallus, as the ‘phallic element’ in the dynamics of identification and difference. For these reasons it seems useful to experiment with applying Freud’s model of castration in a flexible manner, to imagine its use in reference to other elements of bodily difference and, furthermore, in relation to broader social theories of categorisation. It is important here that we note that Freud’s schema can only, of course, be stretched so far: the dynamic of the castration complex seems to require, as a basic condition of possibility, a certain anatomical distinction, clearly evident in the body, which is present/absent across a given population during formative years of individual development. Racial difference, of course, would hence seem susceptible to incorporation within this schema. In respect of issues of ‘primary differences’, it would seem difficult to deny that in distinct political spheres different dimensions of difference, so to speak, come to be prioritised. Different societies, simply put, would appear to operate distinct ‘orders of difference’ such that religious affiliation may ‘over-ride’ considerations of ethnicity as the dominant variable of discrimination. In other socio-historical contexts one can imagine ‘race’ playing a more forceful role than gender in what counts as the most important dimension of difference between subjects. Of course, such ‘orders of difference’ intersect, and combine in highly complex ways, so we should be wary of reducing issues of difference to any one factor. Then again, it does seem that very specific dimensions of ‘primary difference’ have operated in certain societies at specific times. The factor of race in apartheid South Africa, and religious loyalty in Northern Ireland, for example, seemed at certain historical junctures to ‘count more’, at least immediately, than differences (or similarities) of gender. In such societies where there does seem to be such a clear-cut dimension of ‘primary difference’, it is certainly conceivable that this mode of categorisation might take on the dynamics of the absent or present phallus, and may correspondingly lead to identities of possession (and entitlement and power) and of dispossession (of lack, inadequacy, inferiority).

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pertinent to the conceptual reformulations of sexual difference that Lacan will go on to offer. One last component of Freudian psychoanalysis needs be revisited before we move onto Lacan though: the Oedipus complex. This is vital, because it emphasises those aspects of the castration complex and the meaning of ‘the phallus’ that Lacan will go on to conceptualise in a broader and more enabling way.

The Oedipus complex Freud’s Oedipus complex is understood to be a process that is largely symmetrical in regard to how it is initially experienced by boys and girls. In brief, the child exhibits a powerful relation of desire towards the opposite sex partner, and, accordingly, an equally powerful relationship of rivalry and hatred towards the same-sex parent who blocks the possibility of such a relationship. Realising, ultimately, that it will not able to oust the rival parent the child must eventually take the route of substitution if its desires are to be met. So, although it cannot have mommy or daddy, it can have someone like them, a substitute for this person who resembles certain key features of the desired parent. Fearing the rival parent and not able to challenge their hold on the desired parent, the most realistic means of reconciling this situation is through a form of identification with the rival. One becomes like mommy or daddy (i.e. the parent of the same sex) rather than attempting to replace them. By making a strong identification of this sort, the child is in a much better position to find and secure its own version of the desired mommy or daddy as a sexual partner. It is worth emphasising the role of identification in processes of this sort; there is within the Oedipus complex a very powerful imperative to make a sexual identification, both so as to resolve rivalry with the same-sex parent, and to open the possibility of a future sexual relationship. We have here the template of two major kinds of relation: identifying and desiring. The implicit law being, within heterosexist societies, that one should desire one type of person (of the opposite sex) and set up a relation of difference with them, and identify with another (the same sex) with whom one sets up a relation of likeness. In a hetero-normative context these two kinds of relation should not cross over; one should not desire and identify with the same object. (There are of course, historically, other social contexts that are not heteronormative, where such ‘rules’ do not apply in the same way.) The basic components of this account, the functioning of desire and loss for one, and the procedures of likeness, difference and substitution, will be absolutely crucial in Lacan’s structural version of the Oedipus complex. In the following chapter we discuss how the most fundamental structuring relations of the Oedipus complex, the ‘rules’ of difference, substitution, exclusion, absence (as touched on above), are also present within the basic operations of language. This will enable Lacan to offer a somewhat different, yet nevertheless compatible explanation of the Oedipus complex. Although Freud’s notion of the Oedipus complex makes some important early contributions to the understanding of sexuality – especially in light of setting up formative relations of desire and identification – it seems to smuggle a set of hetero-normative assumptions into how one understands the early sexual dynamics of children. Why the automatic attraction to the opposite-sex parent? Freud’s later conceptualisations of the Oedipus complex take this problem into account, and pose instead a situation in which either boy or girl child initially desires its ‘first object’, namely the mothering figure. This

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is hardly surprising in as much as this person is responsible for attending to its biological needs (feeding, cleaning, nourishing the child) and subsequently also gratifying it. In the ‘all or nothing’ nature of early childhood and infancy, the child wishes to have and possess this figure, for this ‘motherer’ to be its and its alone. Involved here is not only the desire for the figure of the mother, but also the desire to be everything the mother desires, to be the object of her desire. They want to be for her what is most valued, most cherished. At this bodily and egocentric stage of life, the most important focus of pleasure and identity, as we have already suggested, is that which psychoanalysts refer to as the phallus. What this means, therefore, is that the child both wishes to have and possess the mother – and here we are looking forward to what Lacan will add to the theory – and to be the phallus for her. This is the child’s unconscious fantasy: that it will be the phallus which epitomises the mother’s desire.

The ‘no’ of the father This fantasy, of course, is not to be. This position of desire is prohibited. It is the figure of the father that brings to an end the possibility of this relationship with the mother, and it does so via the phallus. Having already established how important the phallus is to the child, we are able to understand that the most severe threat that can here be posed to them is that of removing the phallus, of taking it away, or alternatively, of being made to understand that one does not possess the phallus, that it resides elsewhere. Here things start to differ for the boy and the girl: the boy is threatened with loss, the girl is motivated to find and possess what she is said to lack. We are thus back to the castration complex. The threat that is mobilised here is one associated with the phallus. It is from this point that the dynamics of potential loss or lack (as described above) emerge. We can thus understand how it might be that the castration complex brings to an end the Oedipus complex, at least for the boy child, and does so in dramatic fashion. The stakes in the rivalrous competition for the mother have now become too high; the loss of the phallus is too high a price to pay. The threat of castration may as such be said to ‘shatter’ the Oedipus complex. In a way, the opposite holds for the girl child: the emphasis placed on the phallus, along with the suggestion that she does not possess it, may be said, in contrast, to initiate the Oedipus complex in as much as she comes to hate and resent the mother for not having a phallus (and for not giving her one), directing her attentions to the closest possible owner of a phallus, the father. More than this, though, as we have already suggested, the castration complex also ‘gives the human meaning of the distinction between the sexes’ (Mitchell 1982: 13). The intrusion of the prohibition of the father introduces the first fundamental law into the infant/child’s world (the law against incest, you may not have/desire your mother), a law which brings with it the imposition of sexual difference. The enforcement of this law is contingent on the child’s taking on of a relationship to the phallus – a relation to the phallus which is for psychoanalysis what sexual identity is all about. To reiterate: why does the relationship with the mother fail? Exactly on the basis of the phallus – either because if one has it, it will be taken away, or if one does not have it, one must eventually accept this fact or find a substitute for it. (Hence the unconscious symbolic equation of baby to phallus for Freud; the closest a woman can come to ‘having a phallus’ is by receiving the gift of the child from one who has a phallus.) Neither of these options presents itself as a smooth or unproblematic process;

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neither boy nor girl child escapes unscathed. Either one does not have the phallus but will wish for a substitute for it, to offer an equivalent object (typically the feminine position) or one will attempt to protect and represent it, to show one has it (typically the masculine position). Importantly – and this is where Lacan’s re-definition of the ‘phallus’ will be so crucial – these positions should not necessarily correspond to biological ‘sex’, that is, to having the biological body of a girl or a boy; these positions should instead correspond to maintaining a fundamental unconscious relationship to the phallus.

The making of a sexed subject As is becoming evident then, Lacanian psychoanalysis may be characterised by its emphasis, as in Freud, on the role of the father. This is a point of focus that has been rejected by many other forms of psychoanalysis (object relations, ego-psychology, Kleinian psychoanalysis) that have chosen to focus predominantly on the formative nature of maternal relations. What is important about this focus – although it still requires some ‘filling out’, further description of what the ‘phallus’ is and how it articulates with human desire – is the fact that it offers an argument as to how human subjectivity comes to be structured. Lacan and Freud are united on this point, and we should not dilute their message in this respect: it is the castration complex and the meaning of the phallus which make up the bedrock of subjectivity itself and of the place of sexuality within it (Mitchell 1982). As we noted in the introduction, the constitution of the speaking human subject as a coherent social being and the question of sexual identity cannot be separated. As Rose (1982) affirms: it is the mark of the phallus around which subjectivity and sexuality alike are constructed. More to the point yet: ‘The castration complex is the instance of the humanization of the child in its sexual difference’ (Mitchell 1982: 7).

Castration complex as institution of social law To understand how human subjectivity is implicated, indeed somehow constituted in the castration complex, we need to appreciate that a number of interlinked processes are happening here. The child is not only undergoing the intense and formative emotional dynamics of desire, rivalry, prohibition, identification and so on in relation to its parental figures, it is also acquiring language. For Lacan, as we explain later, this is a crucial factor: at the same time the child is discovering sexual difference it is learning to make use of the signifying system of language. Language, like the Oedipus complex itself, involves understanding the operations of substitution, difference and absence. We discuss these parallels in more detail in the following chapter. For now, and at a more basic level, we should focus on the fact that as the child is getting to grips with its relation to the phallus it also has to come to terms with the arrival of a ‘third term’ that disturbs the bond it has with the figure of the mother. (This relation to the phallus, to reiterate, is that of a potential lack in the case of the little girl, and of a potential relation to loss in the little boy, both of which are experienced first as literal, and then at a broader symbolic level.) Put starkly, something external to the intense child-to-mother bond has invaded the serenity of this relationship and broken it apart. This external force, or threat – which is also the first encounter with social law – is the paternal threat of castration. We have here then the arrival of a very

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In the Oepidus complex we are concerned with the arrival of a ‘third term’ that disturbs the intense child-to-mother bond. This external force or threat is the paternal threat of castration.

fundamental prohibition that will change the child’s world for good. It is crucial here that we grasp the role of castration as the imposition of law, as the intrusion of culture into what had otherwise been the self-contained world of infant and caregiver. The castration complex introduces the child into the world of social rules, regulations and roles. For Freud, the traumatic event of the castration complex is what institutes the agency of the superego, the superego being the internalised agency of social law and prohibition we would recognise in commonsensical everyday terms as one’s conscience. The castration complex initiates the equivalent of a ‘domino-effect’ of various rules, regulations and social differentiations beyond the first basic prohibition against incest that then transforms the human being into a properly enculturated subject. In a way, the castration complex is the gateway that allows the laws and order of the broader social domain into the pre-socialised dyad of mother and child. It becomes in effect the necessary entry-point to all other social meanings in so far as they are permeated with the rules and differentiations of the greater social structure. It is for this reason that Mitchell can say that the castration complex is the first point of the acquisition of culture, that the castration complex ‘operates as a law whereby men and women assume their humanity’ (Mitchell 1982: 13). Although at first this may seem a very large claim to make, it would ultimately appear to be justified, particularly once we understand that it is from the point of the castration complex that stem ‘the beginnings of morality, conscience, law and all forms of social and religious authority’ (Eagleton 1983: 165). The father’s real or imagined prohibition of this relationship is symbolic of all higher authority to be later encountered. We arrive here at something of a nodal point for the account that Lacan will go on to develop. All of the above factors, the ‘no’ of the father to

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the child’s desires, the role of law, what he calls ‘the Symbolic’ and the advent of language – which may itself be seen as a kind of castration – will prove fundamental components of his understanding of sexual difference.

The possibility of a trans-historical structure? The Oedipus complex as Freud originally conceived it presents us with a useful array of concepts and explanations that deserve to be developed further. The idea of a pivotal structure established by the position of the father which problematises the child’s desire, specifying legitimate from illegitimate objects of desite, inaugurating a ‘cascade’ of social prohibitions and regulations, seems crucial. This is not simply a historical or constructionist account. As Wright (1998) stresses, the figure of the father stands in the position of a third term that will break the dyadic relation of mother and child: whatever the biology of human beings might be in some far-flung future, their society will still demand a ‘third term’ of some kind or other, an equivalent of castration to break this relation. The third term here may not necessarily be the literal father, it may not even be embodied in a human figure. It may, seemingly, be carried out by an incursion of language, of the world of ‘the Symbolic’. This is a crucial question we will bear in mind in turning to Lacan: how might we reformulate this role of the father in less literal terms, less reliant on a kind of anatomical threat? Furthermore, how might the role of the father be less than contingent on a cast of characters reducible to the individual’s family? Furthermore, how may it be possible to claim that it will be the prohibition of the ‘father’ that alone represents the mark that distinguishes boys from girls? Despite Freud’s invaluable contributions in this direction, his account of the Oedipus complex nevertheless appears to lead us to an inevitable impasse. Without an ultimate reliance on what Mitchell (1982) refers to as ‘a biologically induced identificatory premise’ (18), such a position does not adequately account for the difference between the boy and the girl. The real conceptual challenge that Lacan has to meet here is not that of explaining why the effects of the castration complex may affect little boys and girls differently, but rather that of how the castration complex makes a little girl a girl and a little boy a boy in the first place (Mitchell 1982). These are not processes that are merely added to a subject who is simply ‘topped up’ as a gendered entity as a result. To understand Freud and Lacan in this way is to miss the radical nature of the claims they make. To sketch the problem at stake here in more direct terms, many interpretations of the effects of the castration complex assume the presence of a little boy or girl prior to the effects thus explained. More simply put, the anatomical difference between ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ means that they will be differentially affected by castration. The problem with this is that there is something of an automatic disposition for anatomical girls to be affected by castration in a feminising way, and an automatic disposition for anatomical boys to be affected by castration in a masculinising way. We might attempt to defend Freud on this point: although anatomical distinctions do set up a platform for how castration will affect a given individual, sexual identity for him is definitely not ultimately reducible to anatomy. True as this might be, the challenge for Lacanian psychoanalysis is to develop an account of sexual identity that is not in any way reliant on a ‘biologically induced identificatory premise’, and that does not in any way risk assuming a ‘girl’ or a ‘boy’ exists before the event of castration.

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Conclusion This chapter has introduced a series of important concepts from Freudian psychoanalysis as means of offering a different theoretical perspective on the question of sexual identification. We have argued here that the taking on of an identification as man or woman is, for psychoanalysis, always, crucially, an unconscious process, one that cannot be reduced to issues of social construction or biology alone. Although we should by no means remain uncritical of how Freud’s concepts have been put to use – there is a significant period of feminist history dedicated to making critiques of just this sort (see Millet 1969) – we should not turn a blind eye to their explanatory power. In this respect, this chapter closes as it begins, by aligning itself with Mitchell’s feminist psychoanalysis: [A] rejection of psychoanalysis and of Freud’s works is fatal for feminism. However it may have been used, psychoanalysis is not a recommendation for a patriarchal society, but an analysis of one. If we are interested in understanding and challenging the oppression of women, we cannot afford to neglect it (1974: xiii).

Acknowledgement The author would like to acknowledge the efforts of Ian Parker and Sue van Zyl who provided invaluable constructive criticism on earlier drafts of this chapter.

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T. Shefer

Chapter 5

Lacan, the meaning of the phallus and the ‘sexed’ subject Derek Hook

The human in language: an unnatural fit Having introduced the crucial components of a Freudian account of sexual difference in the previous chapter, we now turn our attention to Lacan. Lacan’s reformulations of Freudian theory attempt to extricate psychoanalysis from the essentialism of biological/anatomical types of explanation. The discussion of Lacan’s contributions in this regard is split into two parts. First, we need to introduce a series of concepts that are integral to Lacanian psychoanalysis, the notions of the Imaginary and the Symbolic orders, for example, along with a series of concepts drawn from the domain of structural linguistics (principally the idea of the ‘signifier’ and ‘signified’ as components of the sign and how Lacan applies these notions to psychoanalytic concerns.) Following this, we add an additional ‘layer’ to the Oedipus complex as it has been described above, emphasising how Lacan rethinks important aspects of this process. Both such levels of discussion will be necessary if we are to grasp what Lacan has in mind with his ideas of the phallic signifier, and how this particular element, once activated within the familial context, becomes the first point of social differentiation and hence also the first point of sexual difference and identity. The role of language in all of this, we should emphasise, is pivotal; as Freudian psychoanalysis had initially borrowed notions from medicine and biology to strengthen its conceptual purchase on the human psyche and sexuality, so Lacanian psychoanalysis borrows from (and extends) the study of structural linguistics so as to further its engagement with the unconscious processes of subject formation. In investigating the structure and operations of language, Lacan is also intrigued more generally with the power and structuring principles

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of the larger category of the Symbolic, which is the pre-existing domain of language and law, the social and cultural structure into which the child is born. So, importantly, for Lacan, masculinity and femininity are not biological essences but are instead symbolic positions. The assumption of one of these two positions is an obligatory component of human subjectivity. Each sex, furthermore, is defined separately with respect to a third term. In the words of Fink (1995: 105): ‘Men and women are defined differently with respect to language, that is, with respect to the Symbolic order.’ The sexual position that the child will eventually take on is not thus a predisposed one, a simply ‘natural’ category. It is, by contrast, something that must be acquired. In the same way we should remain wary of too easily assuming a preordained fit between the neonate and the Symbolic world into which it is born. There is an entire ‘world of language’ which pre-exists the infant; it is into this world of symbolic exchanges and meaning that the ‘human animal’ of the infant is born. As Mitchell (1982: 5) states: Language does not arise from within … [it] always ‘belongs’ to another person. The human subject is created from a general law that comes to it from outside itself and through the speech of other people, though this speech in its turn must relate to the general law.

Being in the Imaginary We can emphasise the ‘unnaturalness’ of language (along with the forced imposition of sexual identity to which it is related) with reference to the state of being which precedes the child’s acquisition of language. This is where Lacan introduces his concept of the Imaginary. The Imaginary is an order of experience, a ‘state of being’ that characterises the infant’s earliest preverbal and ‘pre-social’ interactions with the mother. Here no clear distinction exists between the ‘self’ and other, between internal and external worlds. There is no clearly defined ‘I’ at this point, rather a loosely bounded and undifferentiated mass of sensations in which the body, much like the emerging ego, has not taken on a coherent form. We have here a ceaseless exchange where the ‘self’ seems to pass into objects, and objects into it. (Lacan is suspicious of all conceptualisations of a ‘self’ that imply that there is in fact some substantive or cohesive entity underlying the sense we have of what we are. He hence avoids this term altogether, preferring the notion of the ‘subject’ who is always divided, split, or barred.) The Imaginary is thus an order based on the incorporation of sameness; there is no separation or gap between the experience of the child and the world it inhabits, with which, as Minsky asserts, it is fused: Objects in the Imaginary repeatedly reflect themselves in a kind of sealed unit where everything is an extension of the self which has been projected onto the external world so there are no apparent differences of divisions (Minsky 1996: 146). This is the pre-Oedipal world of narcissistic identifications and mirror reflections. It is a world, as Wright (2000) explains, in which the child patterns its emerging ego on Imaginary counterparts that appear to offer the promise of unity, cohesion and integrity. It is also however a domain of rivalry and aggressivity. Not only does the child narcissistically identify with, fall in love with, its mirror image (or reflection in others), it also experiences conflict and hateful relations with these images, from which it is as yet not wholly differentiated.

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What should be clear here is that the Imaginary is not a stage – although Imaginary experience does predominate at early periods of life – it is rather one of three orders of being. The two others are the Symbolic, which we have touched on briefly already, and explain in more detail as we continue, and the Real which designates that which cannot be signified, that which cannot be captured or reduced to symbolic expression. These three orders of being are ever-present and underscore all aspects of human experience. The Imaginary is the domain of images and reflections, which the child will continually ‘take on’, identify with, as means of assuming an identity of sorts, an ego. This Imaginary is typically understood with reference to the mirror-stage, which is more a process than a stage, a process that enables us to build up an ego on the basis of the identification with images. It is in this way, for Lacan, that the human infant comes to consolidate a rudimentary sense of an ‘I’. Eagleton explains this well: The image in the mirror both is and is not itself, a blurring of subject and object … [which] begins the process of constructing a center of ‘self’. This ‘self’ … is essentially narcissistic, we arrive at a sense of an ‘I’ by finding that ‘I’ reflected back to ourselves by some object or person in the world. This object is at once somehow part of ourselves – we identify with it – and yet not ourselves, something alien. The image which the small child sees in the mirror is in this sense an ‘alienated’ one: the child ‘misrecognizes’ itself in it, finds in the image a pleasing unity which it does not actually experience in its own body (1983: 164–165). Not all the images that the child identifies with are literally mirror-images (although this provides Lacan with a paradigmatic example of what is happening at this point.) Children are equally able to identify with similar ‘reflections’ of themselves, the ‘images’ of other children, the ‘images’ of how they are reflected back to themselves by others they come into contact with. The mother is one such Imaginary counterpart; she provides a very basic means through which the child is reflected back to itself. The Imaginary relationship with the mother will have to be broken if the child is eventually to enter the world of the Symbolic. The ‘third term’ of the figure of the father will be responsible for breaking this relationship.

The impasse of the Imaginary We cannot exist indefinitely in the Imaginary. The narcissistic nature of Imaginary relations represents an impasse for the subject; it is a duality of identifications, a locked binary, as Grosz (1990) puts it, in which each of the two partners defines the other in a kind of closed circuit. If the child is to attain a rudimentary sense of difference and distinctness, the Imaginary relationship with the mother must be broken; unless this occurs the child will remain in a deadlock of narcissistic relations with an other who is never fully separable from the ‘I’. This is a dangerous situation: the infant here is in love with an image of itself, unable to discern between the image in the mirror and the set of subjective and bodily experience that this image reflects. (The mythical story of Narcissus who is hopelessly in love with his own image, unable to break away from it, ultimately dying as a result of this incapacitation, makes for a useful emblem here.) If it remains in the Imaginary, the child will never be able to enter the Symbolic, that pre-established world, in other words, of language, culture, law (and, indeed, patriarchy) into which it is born.

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If the dyadic structure of the Imaginary is to give way to the plurality of the Symbolic order, the intervention of a ‘third term’ will be required. The ‘third term’ which arrives to separate this ‘dual structure’ of mother and child, as suggested above, is the figure of the father. One of the advantages of Lacan’s account in this respect is the fact that the figure of the father in question is not necessarily the actual, literal father of the child. What is more important here is what the father signifies, the first imposition of law, the law, in short against incest, the prohibition that the mother is off bounds to the child as an object of desire. The child is hence disturbed in its libidinal relation with the mother and must now come ‘to recognise in the figure of the father that a wider familial and social network exists of which it is only part’ (Eagleton 1983: 165). Importantly, not only is it the case that the child is part of a wider familial and social network, it is also the case that the role that it must play is already, in a sense, predetermined, laid down for it by the practices of the society in which it has been born. The child, in other words, is being pushed out of the realm of the Imaginary into that of the Symbolic, into a system of social structure and meanings, of laws, language and regulations. The father is the first representative of this world. It is this world of the Symbolic more than the figure of the father himself that ensures the breaking of the Imaginary bond between mother and child. The castration thus involved is the castration implied by the arrival of the Symbolic; it is the castration of the entry of a third term into the Imaginary mother–child bond (as discussed earlier.) This is a symbolic form of castration that, as we shall see later, is enforced and extended by the castration implied by the use of language. The role of the father, and the link that comes to exist between him and the phallic signifier, represents an important nodal point in Lacanian theory, to which we will shortly turn. First though, we need to introduce a series of basic concepts from the field of linguistics, notions of signifier, signified and sign as they pertain to the psychoanalytic project of understanding subject-formation. These concepts will help us understand how the child moves outside of an exclusively Imaginary state of being into the Symbolic order; a move that is, in a way, the resolution of the Oedipus complex itself. Lacan, indeed, is offering a structural equivalent of the basic operations of this complex as it is achieved by the child’s insertion into language, its ‘castration’ by the Symbolic.

The role of the signifier The small child in front of the mirror during the mirror-stage might be understood as a kind of signifier, suggests Eagleton (1983). A signifier, generally put, is a sound, an acoustic image, like the word ‘bat’ when spoken, or for that matter a letter on a page, like the word ‘bat’ when written. In both instances a signifier is essentially something capable of bestowing meaning. (Wright (2000) warns against reducing the idea of a signifier simply to the idea of a word, because any number of social gestures and expressions – like instances of sign language, for example – may work as signifiers.) A signified, on the other hand, is a given meaning – the concept or idea that comes to be attached to the signifier. When signifier and signified work together, we have a sign. (i.e. a signifier like ‘bat’ as it appears on the page, which is related to a particular concept (or signified) that you and I share, i.e. the idea of an instrument for hitting a ball.)

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A sign may hence be represented as:

Signified

Signifier Figure 5.1 The Saussurean sign (Saussure 1977)

Both parts (signifier and signified) are necessary for signification to take place however; a concept in one’s head without an attached signifier cannot be easily communicated (except, of course, with reference to a series of other signifiers). Similarly a signifier, ‘arigato’, without any attached signified, means nothing (arigato is a Japanese word; for Japanese speakers it is of course a signifier with an attached signified). It was for this reason that earlier theoreticians of language, such as Ferdinand de Saussure (1977), emphasised the interdependence of these two component parts, which, like opposite sides of a piece of paper, seemed to be practically inseparable from one another. (Hence the enclosing circle in the diagram.) Not only do both signifier and signified need to occur together if signification is to be successful, both parts need to be established in a particular bounded relation by convention. However, importantly – and this is where things get interesting – the relation between signifier and signified, although thoroughly conventionalised, is nonetheless arbitrary. It is conventionalised in the sense that there is a kind of standard agreement amongst Englishlanguage speakers that ‘bat’ when written or spoken corresponds to a certain concept or idea – namely that of a club with a handle which one uses to strike a ball. This relationship is also arbitrary, though, because many other names – other signifiers – can be used to evoke this same object; we might refer to a club, a racquet, a stick, or names in any number of different languages to refer to the same thing. Although this relationship between signifier and signified is relatively stable, it is not absolutely fixed. In fact, to complicate things, a given sound or mark (i.e. signifier) can have more than one meaning: the signifier ‘bat’ can refer to an instrument for hitting a ball, or a creature with wings that hangs upside down in caves. Although generally a stable process, the process of signification certainly permits for the over-determination of meaning (signifiers meaning more than one thing), and for slippage (a less than absolutely fixed relation between signifier and signifier). Just as one signifier may evoke multiple signifieds, so many signifiers may stand for a basic signifier. This proves particularly interesting for psychoanalysts who treat ‘mistaken’ forms of signification, slips-of-the-tongue, along with the ambiguity of jokes and the over-determined meaning of dreams, as a source from which they are able to read unconscious meanings. (The wrong impression should not be given here: it is not the case that some instances of signification are simply ‘mistaken’ and others are not. It is rather the case that forms of signification are always ‘mistaken’ in as much as they have the potential to carry multiple meanings.)

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One way of understanding the traditional psychoanalytic notion of repression – i.e. the process whereby unacceptable ideas or impulses are rendered unconscious – is through the idea that particular signifieds have been split of from those signifiers that would bring them into consciousness. The dreamwork off dreams, then, is an alternative and disguised means of arranging signifieds with an unusual set of signifiers. This is why dreams must be interpreted, and cannot simply be read for literal meaning. The unstable relationship between signified and signifier permits the ‘constant sliding of the signifier over the signified’, in Lacan’s phrase. The possibility of such a slippage is for Lacan a precondition for the functioning of the unconscious. That signifiers can signify more than one thing or concept, that words and gestures may be over-determined, ambiguous (that they can ‘hold’ several different significations, in other words), is a condition of possibility for the fact that unconscious meanings and desires can and do erupt in everyday speech. (By the same token, the fact that signifieds – such as disturbing wishes, urges – can be split off from the signifiers that would bring them into conscious awareness is also a condition of possibility for repression.) Lacan in fact suggests that it is the effects of the signifier on the subject that constitute the unconscious. Lacan hence adapts Saussure’s depiction of the sign in the following way:

Signifier –––––– signified Figure 5.2 The Lacanian sign

The order of priority is hence reversed: signifier comes to be emphasised as more important. This is a move befitting the psychoanalyst’s concentration on the signifiers used by patients that may (and do) signify more than their intended meanings. It is in this respect that Lacan advances that the signifier in fact dominates the subject – a prioritisation on the signifier that will become increasingly important as we continue. This amendment of Saussure’s diagram makes sense for anyone who is focused on engaging with the unconscious, for anyone who intends on grappling with how different and multiple signifieds emerge from the same signifier (as in the psychoanalytic practice of free association, in which the analysand or patient is asked to say whatever comes into their mind without any sense of inhibition). Lacan also does away with the enclosing circle of Saussure’s diagram, suggesting thus the absence of any fixed relationship between these two components. This difference between Lacan and Saussure becomes marked at this point: as this diagram suggests, Lacan understands language not as a set of signs, as does Saussure (1977), but as a set of signifiers. For Lacan, signifieds (concepts, meanings) are the result of the play of signifiers; our analytic focus should hence be on the latter, especially given that he maintains that the human subject itself – as a subject of the Symbolic order – is also constituted as secondary in relation to the signifier. Returning now to the situation of the child in front of the mirror, just as the child in front of the image may be seen as a kind of signifier – something capable of bestowing meaning – so the image in the mirror (what the child sees when looking into the mirror) may be

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understood as a kind of signified, a given meaning. Initially we have the case in which the image the child sees is somehow the ‘meaning’ of itself – here signifier and signified are harmoniously related, locked interdependently together like signifier and signified in Saussure’s circle diagram. This of course will not always be the case, because as we have seen, the relation between signified and signifier is not absolutely stable, and permits the ‘constant sliding of the signifier over the signified’. In the case of the preverbal, pre-Oedipal child in front of the mirror who has not yet advanced out of an exclusive existence in the Imaginary, this ‘sliding of signifier over signified’ has yet to happen. No gap has as yet opened up between signified and what they might signify; as such the child does not yet possess an unconscious. This apparent harmony, this lack of split between an unconscious unintended set of meanings and the conscious speaker, is, as Eagleton (1983) suggests, one way of describing the Imaginary order. As suggested above, a gap of sorts needs to be opened up here, a separation, or split. Why? Because without a gap of this sort the child will not be able to understand difference, distinction, or, for that matter, rules, the fact that things have names, that one thing (a word or signifier) can stand in for another (a concept); the child will instead remain forever in the ‘oneness’ of the Imaginary. Hence it will not gain access to subjectivity – remembering here that for Lacan one only properly becomes a subject after one acquires language.

Language as a system of differences, substitutions, exclusions We might make reference to another important lesson of language to drive this point home. The meaning of the signifier ‘bat’ does not come from any inherent link between it and what it signifies. In fact, a signifier like ‘bat’ comes to have a meaning only on the basis of a system of differences. The meaning of a signifier is dependent on the fact that this signifier is heard as being different from all other similar signifiers. The signifier ‘bat’ is only successful in conveying a meaning in reference to a system of difference where we know that ‘bat’ is different from ‘cat’, ‘hat’, ‘mat’ and other similar-sounding terms. We can put this in technical terms. For Saussure (1977) signifiers are fundamentally differential; there are ‘positive’ terms in language, only because of differences. Signifiers only take on value by virtue of their difference from the other elements in the system; they have no inherent or positive value in and of themselves. The fundamental law of the signifier (Saussure 1977) is that a signifier signifies something only in relation to another signifier. In gaining access to language, then, the child comes to understand, although not in a fully conscious or rational way, that a signifier has meaning only by virtue of its difference from other signifiers. This is a necessary lesson to learn if we are to make language work: a child needs to use particular words to stand in for particular things. It will not be able to convey meaning if it uses the same basic noun to designate all objects. It will likewise prove unsuccessful in understanding the meaning of other speakers if the signifiers they use are interpreted too widely. In more concrete terms, by learning how to communicate effectively, the child comes to understand that particular words stand in for particular things, that a sign presupposes the absence of the object it signifies. The particular signifiers of a language ‘stand in’ for actual objects and events – this is part of the ‘magic’ of language and what it enables – and we can speak about things that are not in front of us and other people can understand what we mean. Likewise, we can talk about past events and circumstances that

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no longer exist, and, once again, people are able to gain a sense of what happened. This substitutive function is absolutely vital. Indeed, we will not be able to express ourselves in language without this very fundamental understanding: words stand in for the object they represent; they come, in a sense, to replace the things to which they refer. Lacan describes this in a rather dramatic fashion: ‘the symbol manifests itself first … as the murder of the thing’ (1977: 104).

The experience of lack This idea of the replacement of the object by words can be argued on the basis of necessity: what really necessitates signification in the child – the use of language – is the need to restore something that is missing, to communicate that there is something that it wants. As Rose (1982: 31) argues: ‘Symbolisation starts … when the child gets its first sense that something could be missing’. Words stand for objects when those objects are experienced as lost. This relationship between experiencing lack and being pulled into the domain of the Symbolic should be stressed. As Fink (1995) insists, a lack or loss of something is required to set the Symbolic in motion: Why would a child ever bother to learn to speak if all its needs were anticipated? … If nourishment is never missing, if the desired warmth is never lacking, why would the child take the trouble to speak? (103). Lack, for Lacan, forces us into the Symbolic. It is just such an opening up of a lack, a lack we incessantly try to fill – or, in different words, the identification of a ‘lost object’ that we are continually trying to ‘refind’ – that best describes the unending substitutions and replacements of the workings of human desire. A precondition for desire to work in this way is the unending substitutive operations of language itself. We enter language at the same time that the law, or, put differently, the ‘name of the father’, comes to be imposed on us. These two processes are intertwined. Both may be understood as a ‘making of a lack’ that the continual reference by one signifier to another will try to fill; both result in the installation of desire as the inescapable condition of the human subject.

Operations of subjectivity The ‘coming into being’ within language is a structural analogue of sorts for the ‘coming into being’ as a sexually differentiated social subject within the Oedipus complex. It will hopefully become clear now why such a detour into the discussion of linguistic concepts is so crucial: this is a model of sorts for Lacanian psychoanalysis, one which gives us the basic procedures and operations necessary for the differentiation (or identification) of the sexed subject. We start here to get the gist of Lacan’s meaning: sexual identity only comes about as a result of difference and distinction. The child’s identity as a subject is constituted by relations of difference and similarity in relation to those around it, and by lessons of exclusion and absence. For the Oedipus complex to be resolved, we need to be able to differentiate ourselves from others, and, as importantly, we need to be able to differentiate between the particular sexed positions of the mother as opposed to that of the father. Furthermore, we will also need to make the pivotal substitutive step of understanding that although mother

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is ‘off limits’, excluded, there might be another similar (substituted) object in the future who may conceivably take her place as the object of my desire. Similarly, I will, in a way, need to substitute myself; I cannot usurp my father’s role in the family, rather (speaking from the position of the boy child) I will have to become a father (and husband) myself within a different familial context. Here then we start to see structural parallels between the workings of language and the process of sexual identification. To reiterate: Lacanian psychoanalysis hopes to use the basic operations of language as a conceptual template of sorts, as a structural equivalent of the basic operations of sexual differentiation. Several basic operations (or kinds of relation) must therefore come to function as rules. (It is helpful here to bear each of these rules in mind as they relate to the resolution of the oedipus complex.) ❍ A relation of difference: the child must come to recognise that mother and father are different, that they are each (like signifiers in the system of language) constituted differently in their relation to another signifier (in this case that privileged signifier will be the phallus, as I will go on to explain). ❍ A relation of substitution: rather than attempt to be the object of the mother’s desire, to possess the mother for itself, the child must learn, via the route of substitution, that it will have to be the object of someone else’s desire, that it will have to be the lover and partner of some other person. (That one term can stand in for or replace another is a condition of possibility for language to work, and, in turn, for the social and familial structure to exist.) ❍ A relation of absence: the child must give up the bond it has with (and the wishes it has for) the mother’s body. (‘The word is the death of the thing’: to enter the Symbolic is to incur a certain absence, the ‘making of a lack’ that is the result of the fact that the whole of my experience, or ‘being’, cannot be expressed within language.) ❍ A relation of exclusion: there is a role which for the child is prohibited: that of being the parent’s lover. (One must forego exclusively Imaginary modes of identification and take up one’s co-ordinates within the Symbolic.) In short then, just as these operations of difference, substitution, absence and exclusion must be learnt within the domain of language if effective communication is to occur, so they must be learnt within the domain of subjectivity. In terms of the latter, the child must learn that these rules apply to itself, that it (like mother and father) may be substituted for another (it can one day become a mother, a father, a husband, a wife), that it is subject to a law of differentiation (it must take up a position on either side of the sexual divide, must identify as masculine, feminine in order to gain entry into the Symbolic order). As is the case in signification, so it is in the case of subjectivity: identities cannot ultimately come about as an unrelenting exchange of samenesses.

Inadequacy of the Symbolic: the castration of entry into language We are now in a better position to understand how the entry into language is itself a form of castration. It is useful to reiterate that there is always an inadequacy of sorts in the Symbolic order. Entry into language is for Lacan a kind of castration by virtue of the fact that speaking of a thing is to impose a substitution, to make a word replace a thing. This

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castration of the entry into language recalls the primal separation of the child from the mother, which, as we have seen, is only achieved by a movement into the Symbolic. It is for this reason that for Lacan the human subject is unavoidably split, or ‘barred’. Unlike humanist conceptualisations of a ‘self’ which is autonomous, undivided, sovereign unto itself, the subject, for Lacan, is necessarily split as a result of her or his entry into language which: produces the division between the subject of the unconscious which stumbles, and the conscious ego that considers itself as wholly invested in what it speaks … what the subject says and what is said, the ‘statement’ and the enunciation, never match (Wright 2000: 74). To the ‘unknowability’ of the subject to his- or herself (insisted upon by Freud by virtue of the existence of the unconscious), Lacan adds the unknowability of the subject’s being within the structures of language. There is no sign that can sum up my entire being, says Minsky (1996), ‘most of what I am can never be expressed in language. I cannot “mean” and “be” at the same time’ (156). Leader (1995) makes the same point with a pertinent example: writing a ‘smalls ad’ with which one hopes to represent one’s self. ‘Single white female who enjoys walking dogs and reading’: how can such a representation do justice to one’s sense of who one is? Such an exercise must always remain unsatisfying or incomplete at some level. It is an exercise that cannot but mis-represent or under-represent me in the process, one that testifies to the fact that all of what we are cannot be put into language. We get a sense here of how the first instance of signification, of language, of the use of symbols, is a kind of ‘cut’ into the Imaginary experience of plenitude and fullness. Castration, at its most basic, is the recognition by the subject of a kind of lack. Thus, women, no less than men, must undergo castration. Here we cannot reduce castration simply to a kind of bodily loss. ‘For Lacan’, writes feminist scholar Deborah Luepnitz (2002), ‘there is nothing missing from the real of the female body. Lack is something that exists in the Imaginary register; [castration] is operative for everyone’ (227). Language itself, in this sense, presents a form of castration, for it introduces a troubling absence into the life of the subject. There is thus a kind of alienation in language just as there was in the image. Rose (1982) is succinct in this respect, noting that there is loss and difficulty in the symbol, just as there was division in the image. Wright (2000) makes much the same point in offering that: ‘The subject is bound to the Symbolic order, while the ego cannot escape its Imaginary origin’ (74). The Lacanian subject is as such doubly divided – alienated by taking on an image as the basis of its identifications which is never itself, and ‘castrated’ by the entry into language such that there is an ever-present gap between what we intend to say, and what actually is said. The assumption of language does not of course simply represent a relation of loss; there is an important gain here also. Language, after all, is our principle means of communicating; it is by virtue of language that we are able to connect to a network of social meanings. Language, furthermore, is the means through which we create social bonds. In addition to this, language is also of course the ‘operating system’ of the unconscious and of desire, both of which come into existence at the same time. Minsky (1996) expresses this adeptly:

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While language, unlike the Imaginary, cuts us off from the objects of our desire (our mother and our substitutes for her) at the same time, it returns desire to us as we move, with a new sense of identity as a human subject, from one meaning to the next in a lifelong search for a perfect fit between language and our fantasy of plenitude (148).

The question of the mother’s desire We return now to the Oedipus complex, to add an additional explanatory layer to those initially proffered by Freud. True to Freud’s understanding, Lacan emphasised that the infant is a totally dependent being at the beginning of its life. Its physical and psychological needs are clearly centred on the primary caregiver (typically, but not always, the figure of the mother). As such the infant enters the Oedipus complex intensely bound to the mother, a bond that is shared, in most instances, by the mother herself, who is typically focused on providing the infant with the care. The child is initially unable to understand the rationales of the caregiver’s behaviour, despite that it is of vital importance to the gratification of its needs. In Lacan’s conceptualisation there is one recurring question that poses itself for the child repeatedly, in an endless variety of ways: what does it want? This question preoccupies the child, and is posed in relation to virtually all facets of its activity. Whether it is the issue of why it is being fed at a certain time, the question as to where the mother is going, of why she does what she does: the commondenominator, in each such questioning instance is the question of what the mother actually desires. It would be a mistake to understand this question, at so early a moment in the infant’s life, as coherently or rationally formulated; this questioning occurs before the infant has entered the Symbolic, the world of language, as discussed above. This questioning finds form rather as an emotional expression or concern, an ongoing awareness of the mother’s desire. Importantly, the answers the child poses to this question, and the position it eventually takes up in relation to (what it takes to be) the mother’s desire, form an integral part of the Oedipus complex. What is being evoked here, to frame this issue in a different way, are early experiences of absence or lack. As Leader (1995) puts it: ‘The child is confronted with a series of questions about the mother’s movements and whims … there is an operation which will link all these enigmas about the mother to a precise signification, that of the phallus’ (92).

The absent object Despite the intensity of the mother–child bond, it is never an exclusively dyadic relationship; there is always, insists Lacan, a third term present, something beyond the child to which the mother’s desire is aimed: the phallus. To be clear: the child is situated within the ‘field’ of the mother’s desire – the infant does, after all, represent a nodal point of love, investment and care (at least for most mothers) – but it does not exhaust this desire. We are in a position now to offer a first tentative definition of what Lacan might mean by his understanding of the phallus: the phallus is the Imaginary object of the mother’s desire which remains outside of the child’s reach, something it can neither grasp nor bring into being, something quite ‘other’ than it.

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This Imaginary object of the phallus remains enigmatic, the child does not know what it is; it is, however, considered to be what the mother most intensely desires, that which represents an intense concentration of pleasure, be it the relationship with the father (or an erstwhile stand-in, a lover, a romantic partner, perhaps). This object (or relationship) of desire is one that the child cannot compete with; indeed, the resultant comparison is one which humbles the child, be it on the abstract level of its ability to be the phallus, or on the more concrete level of the child’s own sexual organs. As viable as such a symbolic equation of father’s penis-phallus may seem, we must not make any such equation permanent, or reduce it too eagerly to the level of literal comparison. The Imaginary object of the phallus – as that to which the mother’s desire is directed – remains always somewhat enigmatic, undefined and ‘veiled’.

Being the phallus The child then must realise that, as important as it may be to the mother, it will never be the exclusive object of her desire. It experiences itself as marked by a lack by virtue of the fact that it does not possess the phallus. It is, in other words, not able to fully satisfy her desire. The mother, however, is also marked by lack; she is incomplete because she does not possess the phallus she desires. Indeed, she must be incomplete: why else does she desire? Both mother and child are hence bound to the phallus; as Benvenuto and Kennedy (1986) emphasise: ‘the infant is bound to the mother, who is herself bound to the phallus in so far as she does not have it’ (131). We now begin to understand something of the quandary in which the child finds itself. It is situated within the field of the mother’s desire, but is not able to fulfil it. This attempt by the child to be the object it thinks the mother lacks/desires permits for an endless amount of variation; it takes no one form or given set of activities. What might the attempt ‘to be’ the phallus entail? Well, it is an Imaginary position that would permit for as much variety as there are different mothers and children; it seems to be the child’s attempt to be everything for the mother. Leader (1996) gives some examples: it might mean to be a glowing, seductive child, or the effort to enchant or puzzle the mother, to impress or seduce the adults it comes into contact with – whatever form seems to interest the mother the most.

Phallus as signifier of lack What we need to remain aware of here is the fact that, although the phallus is the signifier of the mother’s desire, it is also always the signifier of lack. It helps here to reiterate that the phallus (for the child) is both that which the mother desires, and that which she does not have, both a signifier of desire and a signifier of lack. Adams (1992) and Luepnitz both comment on this paradoxical aspect of the phallus. On the one hand the term ‘phallus’ refers to our wish for completeness, ‘the phallus is what no one can have but everyone wants: a belief in bodily unity, wholeness, perfect autonomy’ (Luepnitz 2002: 226). The phallus, in this respect, is a wishful means of defending ourselves against castration. However, given that the phallus is the ‘covering of lack par excellence’ (Adams 1992: 77) it also becomes the signifier of lack, of the fact that there is something that needs to be covered. The paradox here is that the very thing that promises an Imaginary completeness

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The question of lack is of crucial importance to psychoanalysis, as Fink (1995) asks, “Why would a child ever bother to learn to speak if all its needs were anticipated?”

comes also to signify the very opposite of completion; it calls attention to the fact of a lack that needs to be attended to.

The phallus as it exists in the Imaginary and in the Symbolic The phallus is not only an Imaginary object; it also exists in the domain of the Symbolic. The Symbolic of course is a very different order of existence. Unlike in the Imaginary, the phallus here is not an Imagined object locked into a succession of images with which the child is constantly attempting to identify itself. Here the phallus is a signifier of the mother’s desire. A signifier, as discussed above, is something capable of conveying meaning – such as a sound, a mark, a letter, a gesture. In speaking of the phallus as it exists in the Symbolic as a signifier, we are reiterating the fact that there are a great many things that can stand in for ‘the mother’s desire’. Just as any number of words can stand in for a given concept, an infinite number of activities and objects can stand in for ‘that which is worthy of mother/ father’s desire’. In Lacan’s reading of the Oedipus complex during the 1950s, the child comes gradually to recognise (not in a conscious way) that it cannot somehow ‘incarnate’ the phallus for the mother. It comes to understand this because the phallus is not an attribute of an individual, but instead a signifier of sorts. Indeed, the attempt to be the Imaginary object of the phallus gives way to the realisation that there are many, many different possible things, activities,

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relationships that seem to hold the desire and fascination of the parents. It is at this point when the child understands the phallus in a Symbolic capacity. Luepnitz (2002) is helpful here when she asserts that the phallus is here not so much a thing as a position through which different objects circulate: Adults can use wealth, accomplishments, or their own children as phallic objects. In this way, the ‘objects’ are desired for their representative value, their capacity to make the subject feel complete [for how it places them in the eyes of others] (226). Here are the basic co-ordinates then of what the phallus means for Lacan: initially an Imaginary object that the child wishes to be, so as to secure the desire of the parents, to be that desire, yet, eventually, the phallus takes on a Symbolic significance as a signifier of what the mother or father desires, a token of what the child does not have. As such it is equally a signifier of lack. The phallus can thus be understood – in the dimension of the Symbolic – as a ‘signifier of desire’, a ‘signifier of the other’s desire’, a signifier of overwhelming importance to the child. It is crucial we grasp the difference between these two different versions of the phallus: the Imaginary phallus is perceived by the child in the pre-Oedipal phase as the object of the mother’s desire, ‘as that which she desires beyond the child; the child thus seeks to identify with this object’ (Evans 1996: 142). The Symbolic phallus is, by contrast, the signifier of the other’s desire. So, whereas the castration complex and the Oedipus complex revolve around the Imaginary phallus, the question of sexual difference revolves around the Symbolic phallus (Evans 1996). This is explained in more detail as we continue. It should be becoming clear that Lacan’s conceptualisation of the phallus means it never has to be identified with a physical aspect of the body, or, indeed, with the penis. As an Imaginary object, the phallus is always something the child cannot reach, something it does not have, something it understands as lacking. As a Symbolic element, as the signifier of the other’s desire, the phallus could potentially be an infinite number of possible things.

From Imaginary object to signifer of lack: giving up the phallus If the Oedipus complex is resolved, then the child’s attempt to be the phallus must be given up. This is a gradual process, which never happens easily or without conflict. Many of the key concerns of Freud’s formative description of the Oedipus complex are hence played out in this ‘giving up on the dream of being the Imaginary phallus’, issues of rivalry, fear, the prospect of humiliation, and so on, are all present here. It is not the function of the father alone that forces the child to give up on this dream. There is a pronounced element of frustration or inability that characterises the child’s progress through the complex. At some point it has to acknowledge that the Imaginary pretence of attempting to incarnate the phallus will not succeed. After all, ultimately the child must have something real to show; it needs to present the mother with some evidence of this supposed or potential possession of the phallus. There is of course a decreasing likeliness of this happening, given the degree to which the figure of the father (or whoever or whatever else the focus of the mother’s desire might be) is imagined to really possess this object of desire. The child experiences an anxiety-provoking sense of inadequacy and/or impotence

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What might the attempt ‘to be’ the phallus entail? It is an Imaginary position permitting as much variety as there are different mothers and children. It is the child’s attempt to be everything for the mother.

before the prospect of an overwhelming maternal desire that it cannot hope to adequately satisfy. This desire of the mother increasingly comes to be experienced only with reference to a rival object/person or incarnation of the mother’s desire. Also of significance at this point is the fact the mother makes for an omnipotent figure whose whims and interests are of fundamental concern to the child. At this point in the infant’s life – although this is soon to be changed – the mother’s desire is the principal ‘law’ according to which it lives its life. (The term ‘law’ is used advisedly here, because prior to the entry into the Symbolic no binding condition of social law has as yet been imposed.) The Oedipus complex is only finally dissolved when the equivalent of castration has been completed. The father intervenes, either directly, or through the mother’s discourse – through her references and deference to the law thus embodied – and now becomes, instead of the mother, the omnipotent figure, and more than that, a prohibiting figure who strictly forbids the desire of the mother. He lays down the law, permitting identification with him as the one who possesses the phallus, saying in effect to the child, as Benvenuto and Kennedy (1986) state: ‘No, you won’t sleep with your mother’, and to the mother, ‘No, the child is not your phallus. I have it’ (134). Interestingly, the law imposed by the father at this point is not aimed simply at the child, but also at the mother, and, more accurately yet, at her desire. One of the functions of the father, it seems, is to enforce a certain distance between the mother and the phallic object, keeping her ‘in the lack’ as it were, retaining the phallus as his own specific privilege.

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Resolving the Oedipus complex It is worth reiterating at this point that the Oedipus complex is for Lacan a means of explaining the child’s passage from the narcissism of the pre-verbal, erotic and symbiotic (i.e. Imaginary) relationship with the mother into a properly social existence defined by the structures of language and social law (i.e. the Symbolic.) This requires a repudiation of the mother as a love object, and the submission of the child’s desire to law, as it is represented in the figure of the father. It is at this point that the child grasps the fundamental operations of language. The castration of Imaginary ‘being’ (relative to the legislated existence of the Symbolic) occurs at the same time as the castration by the father of the child’s wish and attempt to be the phallus (as Imaginary object) for the mother. The father makes this hopeful dream of being the phallus for the mother ever more remote. The function of the father – who need not be the actual father, or, for that matter, even a flesh and blood human being – is essentially just this: of separating the child from the dream of somehow incarnating itself as the object of the mother’s desire. The phallus as an Imaginary object hence recedes ever further from possibility, becoming lost, inaccessible, an impossibility. The closest the child can come to the phallus thus is as a signifier, as something that stands in for something else. The Symbolic phallus thus comes into operation. There is no use in competing with the father, as Evans paraphrases Lacan, because the father always wins. ‘The subject is hence freed from the impossible and anxiety-provoking task of having to be the phallus by realising that the father has it’ (Evans 1992: 129). A distance is hence opened up between the subject and the phallus. This is a distinction worth emphasising: rather than the wish of being one-and-the-same as the (Imaginary) phallus, or the hope of being everything it is and nothing else, the subject is now distanced from the phallus, and can do no more than take up a potential relation to it (the phallus that is, as signifier.) With entrance into the world of language and with the resolution of the Oedipus complex comes the realisation that no one has privileged access to or possession of the phallus. ‘It exists only through the mediation of the other and the Symbolic order’ as Grosz (1992: 321) points out. The subject comes to realise that there is some difference between itself and the phallus – a difference that is not properly registered in the Imaginary. The realisation then is that the phallus is not to be directly reached; one cannot consummate it within one’s self. One’s access to it is always mediated; the closest one can get is to be fixed into a potential relation to it. It is for this reason that the subject’s access to the phallus after entry into the world of the Symbolic is always moderated, modified by the provisos of being something like, or having something like. It is for this reason, the fact that the phallus only exists through the mediation of the other, that Lacan argues that the relations of the sexes to the phallus are regulated by the verbs being and having (Grosz 1992). We might relate this realisation to the child’s entry into the world of language, to the understanding that the word (or signifier) one uses to refer to something is not in fact that thing in and of itself, but rather a way of indicating the actual thing in question, a relation to it. Just as the child comes to understand that the symbol is the death of the thing itself, so it comes to realise that there is no hope in being the phallus itself, only in being in a relation to the phallic signifier. Adams (1992) is insistent on this point: no one definitively has the phallus or is the phallus; then again these are nevertheless ‘categories of experience within which humans represent themselves to themselves’ (76). This distance between subject and phallus, which

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is opened by entry into the Symbolic, is a point of absolute necessity. If this distance is not attained, then one could never aspire to be like one’s father, for example, or to desire someone like one’s mother; one would be stuck in the attempt to be that father, in desiring only that mother, as dictated by the directive to ‘literalise’ the phallus. The Lacanian Oedipus complex in brief Lacan divides the Oedipus complex into three ‘times’. We should however note that the sequence is one of logical rather than chronological order, as Evans (1992) points out. ❍ In the first ‘time’, the child comes to recognise that the mother’s desire surpasses it, that there is something beyond it – the object of the Imaginary phallus – that the mother desires. As a result, the child attempts to embody the phallus of the mother’s desire. ❍ In the second ‘time’, the presence of the father is felt. Part of the father’s role is to establish the incest taboo, to set up a prohibition against the child’s attempts to incarnate the object of the mother’s desire. His intervention results in depriving the mother of her object of desire, it keeps her distanced from the phallus. ❍ The third ‘time’ of the complex sees Lacan’s equivalent of the imposition of the castration complex. The child comes to realise the father ‘has’ the phallus, that he possesses the phallic signifier. The Oedipus complex is dissolved at the point that the child realises it can no longer directly materialise the phallus for the mother; it must now give up the idea of the phallus as an Imaginary object and position itself in a relation to the phallus in its Symbolic dimension as the phallic signifier that will determine sexual identity. (For a clear and succinct overview of Lacan’s reformulation of the Oedipus complex, see Evans 1992: 127–130.)

The Name-of-the-Father To backtrack a little: if the child successfully renounces all attempts to be the Imaginary phallus, then the phallus will be less an Imaginary object than a signifier of what is missing. This will be a momentous step in the life of the child. It will open a sense of lack in what had until this point been experienced by the child as a world of fullness and wholeness. This is a lack that, as we have seen, is further imposed and reiterated by the subject’s acquisition of language. To give up the Imaginary phallus and to take up a relation to the phallic signifier – which is also a taking up of a position in relation to the Symbolic authority of the figure of the father – is what will result in the constitution of sexual identity. The phallus thus becomes a Symbolic function, no longer exclusively an instrument of Imaginary kinds of identification, and rather a way of putting the subject in touch with the realm of the Symbolic. Perhaps the easiest way of expressing this is to say that the child will need to substitute the ‘desire of the mother’ for the ‘name of the father’; a substitution which Lacan describes as the ‘paternal metaphor’. This operation of substitution is crucial, but it is linked to another operation, as discussed earlier, the operation of prohibition. This imperative is what Lacan has in mind with his idea of the ‘Name-of-the-Father’. What the Name-of-the-Father does is to force the child into the realm of the Symbolic, into a network of relationships and rules, a series of familial and social structures, in which

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it will have to find its feet as a speaking subject. For Lacan, this agent need not be the actual father, or even a physical person or ‘embodied actor’; the kind of castration we have in mind here is not literal, but rather symbolic in nature. Wright is useful in this respect, emphasising that for Lacan ‘the symbolic order … [is] upheld by a “Symbolic father” (the Name-ofthe-Father) which is a metaphor for that which imposes the castration of language and stands for the ideal exigency of the law’ (70). This is a crucial element of the psychoanalytic explanation we are attempting to flesh out, for, as Grosz emphasises, ‘Lacan’s understanding of the Name-of-the-Father, on which the child’s entry into the Symbolic order depends, is a reading and rewriting of Freud’s oedipal model in linguistic and socio-cultural terms’ (51). After this symbolic castration, the ‘emergence into language’, the child, who now becomes a social subject, is qualitatively different to what it was before, ‘reconfigured’ we might say in relation to its desire. In the words of Benvenuto and Kennedy: Once the child has acquired language, however rudimentary it may be, then all the pre-verbal structures are radically altered to fit in with the language system … once the child has the capacity for language, there is a qualitative change in his [or her] psychical structure – [they] … become a subject (1986: 131). In speaking of the Name-of-the-Father, we are referring both to the ‘no’ of the father, the factor of law and prohibition that this figure introduces into the child’s life, and to the more abstract status of paternity in patriarchy. We mean also to invoke here a sense of the weight of paternity, the taking on of the father’s name – for we all take on our father’s names in patriarchal contexts – the overarching symbolic authority of the father and the patrilineal tradition in patriarchal societies. (The French nom-du-père, a pun intentionally utilised by Lacan, may be read equally as ‘the father’s name’ or ‘the father’s no’.) As Lacan puts it: ‘It is in the name-of-the-father that we must recognise the support of the Symbolic function which, from the dawn of history, has identified his person with the figure of law’ (1977: 67). To be as straightforward as possible: the Name-of-the-Father is the structural Symbolic element that serves to separate the mother and the child. It designates the father in his capacity as a ‘third term’, ‘as a figure who comes between the child and the mother, and frustrates the child’s desire to be all-in-all to the latter’ (Silverman 1992: 101). It is via this link – that of the Name-of-the-Father – that the symbolic operation of the phallus is linked to the father. The abstract and symbolic quality of this function is made clear by the fact that the discourse of the mother – or further yet, her relationship to her own Symbolic father – may be enough to institute this function. As Leader (1995) points out, what matters is not so much the presence of an actual father or man, but how the figure of the mother manages to indicate implicitly to the child the existence of a Symbolic network to which they are both linked, a network which is beyond the Imaginary relation of the two of them (105).

The paternal metaphor The Symbolic authority of the Name-of-the-Father must be cemented with a substitution. This is crucial to the operation of the Oedipus complex: a fundamental substitution must take place, a substitution that Lacan understands as that of one signifier for another, namely that of the ‘name of the father’ for the desire of the mother. The metaphorical or substitutive

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character of the Oedipus complex itself is highlighted in speaking of the paternal metaphor, as Evans (1992) notes. This metaphor – the substitution of the ‘law’ of the desire of the mother by the law of the Name-of-the-Father – is for Lacan the fundamental metaphor on which all signification depends. In speaking of the ‘paternal metaphor’ and focusing on the crucial substitutive process that lies at the heart of the Oedipus complex, Lacan is giving us a process of subjectification which cannot be reduced to questions of the absence or presence of the actual, literal father. Lacan is very clear on this point: ‘We know today that an Oedipus complex can be constituted perfectly well today even if the father is not there, while originally it was the excessive presence of the father which was held responsible for all dramas’ (cited in Rose 1982: 39). By thinking of the father as the function of imposing law, and the process of the Oedipus complex as a substitution of signifiers, we can see that Lacan is doing his best to Two kinds of phallus in the Oedipus complex It is worth reiterating that in the movement through the Oedipus complex we see two different types of phallus that we should be careful to distinguish between. The phallus is initially an Imaginary object that the child wishes to incarnate within itself. It is later a signifier, a signifier of desire towards which we must take up a position of attempting to have something like or attempting to be something like. As Grosz (1992) points out, although originally ‘an Imaginary (detachable, present or absent) object, possessed by some, desired by others … after oedipalization [the phallus] functions as a Symbolic term (an object of union and/or exchange) between the sexes’ (322). We are not only dealing with ego-level functioning here, with the question of primary Imaginary identification, but also with identification at the level of the Symbolic, with the constitution of a subject. The impact of the phallus is thus a question of both Imaginary and Symbolic positioning. In as much as the phallus operates as a phallic signifier, as a privileged signifier tied into the functioning of the Symbolic, then the phallus comes to work as an anchoring-point of Symbolic constitution. It is in this capacity, as a Symbolic entity – as a question of how one’s subjectivity is marked by law – that the phallus marks the first moment of sexual difference. Here it benefits us to recall that sexual identity works as an imposition, a ‘legislated’ law, an injunction of the Symbolic in addition to being an Imaginary relation to an object of desire. Of course we do not simply move beyond the Imaginary into the Symbolic as if these were merely successive stages of life, one of which could be left totally behind. As socialised human subjects who make identifications and make use of Symbolic structures, we exist always in both Imaginary and Symbolic registers. So while it is true that after Oedipalisation our relationship to the phallus changes – it is lost to us, we come to understand that the attempt to directly incarnate it is futile – this does not mean we do not continue to take up a series of Imaginary identifications that would put us into a potential relation with the phallus. As noted above, just because no one can simply ‘have’ or ‘be’ the phallus, does not prevent humans from representing themselves to themselves within such categories of experience. Whether I attempt to ‘have’ something like or ‘be’ something like the phallus indicates two modes of identification. As Wright (1998) puts it: ‘The being/having dichotomy gives us two Imaginary modes of identification, two modes of being in relation to desire, both of which provide a means of attempting to ward off the threat of castration’ (176). It is characteristic of Lacanian psychoanalysis that we characterise an object differently according to how it is approached in the Imaginary, Symbolic or Real. Although often confusing at first, this adds to the complexity of his account, as in the case of the phallus, which gives us two sets of co-ordinates, one Imaginary and one Symbolic.

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remove this conceptualisation from the essentialisms of anatomy towards something that we only really need the structure of language to explain (albeit, admittedly, within a patriarchal social order). The result of the operation of the paternal metaphor is a signification that the phallus is lost or negated. The movement from phallus as Imaginary object to Symbolic entity as signifier of desire/lack is thus ensured and the individual is ‘subjectified’ and sexed according to the relation she or he subsequently takes up to this signifier of lack.

To (try) to be or to have We have seen then that the phallus is the primary signifier that is imposed by the Name-ofthe-Father and then secured in the substitute process of the paternal metaphor. It is on this basis, as Minsky (1996) points out, that the Name-of-the-Father sets in motion the endless signifying chain that makes the Symbolic and subjectivity possible. To take up a relation to the phallic signifier thus instituted is what results in the constitution of sexual identity, in becoming a ‘sexed subject’. Up until this point, children have not taken on an unconscious relation to the phallic signifier, and have not as such assumed a sexed position. Lacan argues that both boys and girls alike must assume their castration at this point. Castration here, used in a somewhat different way to the usual Freudian deployment of the term, refers to the influence of the father, to the fact that he makes it impossible for the child to identify directly with the Imaginary phallus, to attempt to consummate it within themselves. Castration here refers to the renunciation of the child’s sustained attempt to be the phallus for the mother, something that the child will never easily forego. Moreover, as Leader (1995) underlines, this renunciation occurs not simply because the child realises that it is powerless to incarnate the phallus, but also because it has come to understand that this is in fact impossible to do. It is impossible, because after the operation of the paternal metaphor, the phallus is understood to be irretrievably lost. (This understanding of castration is enforced and supported by the castration of the entry into language discussed above.) Two different positions hence present themselves regarding this missing phallus, which is now, to be doubly sure, not an organ, but rather a Symbolic function, a signifier. So, confronted with the irretrievable loss of the Imaginary phallus, the child takes up a relationship to potentially having, or to potentially being the phallic signifier (the Symbolic phallus, in other words.) One can never quite succeed at either of these objectives; we should not see either of these positions as particularly stable. They are not positions that may be simply secured or ‘completed’ – such is the precarious nature of sexual identification for Lacan. As noted above, no one can ever themselves be said to simply have or be the phallus. It is only through a relation of desire that one can approach a mediated relation of having or being the phallic signifier. This may occur either through another’s desire for a phallic quality one is thought to have (such as possessing a desirable phallic object of sorts, as in the position of masculine sexuality) or through another’s desire for a phallic quality one is thought to be (such as when one’s body is desired, in the position of feminine sexuality.) Both of these positions, to reiterate, are somewhat virtual; they are relations to a phallic signifier, and more than that, relations to the other’s desire. This is worth stressing: given that the phallus only exists through the mediation of another party (our desire for the other’s

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desire), and in reference to the Symbolic order (as an Imaginary object it is irretrievably lost), the relation that we may attain to the phallus is always only potential, and always only a relation to the phallus as signifier of lack. To risk two rather crude formulations here so as to provide a concrete illustration of Lacan’s very abstract point: what is it that men ‘want’, i.e. that which is both the thing they desire and how they would like to be seen by others (the thing that makes them desirable for others)? They would like to be seen as ‘having it’, to be perceived as possessing phallic signifiers of various sorts; that is, signifiers of phallic endowment, be it of money, power, wealth, accomplishment. What, on the other hand, is it that women, or those who identify as women, ‘want’? They would like to be seen as ‘being it’, as being or enacting those signifiers of that which is most cherished or desired. We should not forget how crucial the question of desire is to psychoanalysis. The issue of one’s unconscious desire lies at the very heart of one’s being, despite that it is not directly knowable to the conscious subject. Questions of one’s desire are always, as suggested above, also questions of lack, of what one seeks to be fulfilled. This illusion of being fulfilled by the ‘missing object’ that one desires is what makes desire so compelling; it is for this reason that the phallus works as both signifier of desire and of lack. It is also here worth reiterating the fact that for Lacan desire is always the desire of the other, that is, a desire for the other’s desire for us. As such the taking on of a relation to desire is always the taking on of how one will be desired by an other. (This is a situation which means that our own desire is also, oddly, the desire of the other; we take on the desire of others, i.e. we desire what our mother desired, through us.) The question of the other’s desire and how we try to be that other’s desire is exactly, to reiterate, what underlines how we come to identify sexually as men or as women. The ‘how one will be desired’ is crucially different for those subjects who identify themselves as women as opposed to those who identify themselves as men; this is the factor that differentiates the relation of being versus having the phallic signifier (bearing in mind of course that one’s biological body may not be the same as one’s chosen sexuality). It is as if the taking on of a position of masculinity or femininity, for Lacanian psychoanalysis, is the result of an unconscious commitment made to the mother (the template for the desiring other to come): ‘I will come to have it for you’ (made by the child who will become a boy, a masculine subject), or ‘I will come to be it for you’ (made by the child who will become a girl, a feminine subject). This is an unconscious commitment that lives on, and that correlates to a positioning of the subject in the Symbolic (a positioning that occurs in relation to the phallic signifier). It is a commitment that is a ‘taking on’ of a position relative to the Symbolic authority of the father, the taking on of a location relative to one’s Symbolic castration. It is a commitment to ‘falling in’ on either side of the division between the sexes – a relationship to the phallus as primary signifier of difference – and a ‘taking on’ of a desiring relation to a prospective partner.

Different versions of castration; different relations to lack We understand then that the position we take with respect to the phallic signifier is one of how to be desired. We understand also that desire and lack occur always together. Each such position may also be defined by how it is lacking. Or, to put it somewhat differently, each ‘sexed’ position correlates to a different kind of castration that corresponds to the

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two unconscious commitments I have mentioned above. The masculine commitment ‘I will come to have it for you’ (as directed toward a desired other) contains within it the admission that ‘I do not at the moment have it; someone else does, but I may eventually come to have it’. As Leader (1995) states: ‘[The male child’s] use of the sexual organ must be based on the acceptance of the fact that there is a Symbolic phallus always behind him which he does not have but may one day receive in the future’ (101). Although the masculine subject is situated in a potential relation of possession to the phallic signifier – he may one day become a husband, a father, an inheritor of the Name-of-the-Father – this assumption of the Symbolic phallus is only possible on the basis of the prior assumption of his own castration (Evans 1992). We see a different relationship to the phallic signifier and a different type of castration in the feminine position. The feminine commitment, ‘I will come to be like the phallus’, Two relations to desire If all of this sounds hopelessly abstract, then it helps to provide a few examples of potentially ‘being’ or ‘having’ the phallic signifier. How do we respond to castration, to the fact that the phallus is lost to us, to the fact that we have a lack at the centre of our being that needs to be covered over? We do this by taking on one of two possible relations of potentiality to the phallus; or put differently, by being positioned in a particular relation to our desire. Leader (1996) provides some interesting examples in this regard. A man is sitting at a café and sees a couple walk past. He finds the female attractive and watches her. What is the typical masculine relation to desire we see epitomised here? He fixes his interest on her and wants to ‘have’ her. A woman in the same situation may well do something different, observes Leader. She may be attracted to the man, but will nonetheless spend more time looking at the woman who is with him. Why so? Her relation to desire is different; it is not the wish simply to possess the desired object, but of wanting to know what makes this woman desirable for the man. Her relation to desire is about being like a signifier of his desire, of enacting this signifier of his desire in this way. Another example can be drawn from children’s games within a day-care centre: Sue decides that she wants a toy that Mary is currently guarding for herself. But rather than directly stating her desire, she tells Mary she has come to fetch it for another little girl, Lisa, who desires it. Later three boys are playing in the same area. When Nick sees that Kevin has the toy, he demands it for himself … Rather than appealing to the supposed desire of [another child], he simply tries to … gain possession of the object (Leader 1996: 5). In this example, Nick asserts his own desire (to have the desired thing) whereas Sue appeals to the desire of someone else. The boy wants to win the prized object; the girl aims less at the object than at being the other girl’s desire, enacting it. ‘What a woman searches for in the world around her is not an object – female collectors after all, are extremely rare – but [to be] another’s desire’ (Leader 1996: 6). A women’s interest is not simply in having one man or woman (in possessing a phallic signifier), but rather in understanding a desiring relation, in being able to enact something desired in being a phallic signifier); this is her route to desire. While this may sound uncomfortably generalising, and a rather essentialist way of distinguishing between men and women, it is worth pointing out that what is being described here are two structured relations to desire. Not all subjects who ‘fit the bill’ anatomically speaking, as women, may desire in the way outlined above. However, if Lacan is right, all people who take up a sexed position as feminine, who sexually identify as women – a group which of course may include those who anatomically we would identify as men – take on such a structured relation to desire.

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contains within it the admission that ‘I am not it’, that ‘I lack it’, that, as it were, ‘although I do not and will not be able to possess it, I will be able to be a version of it’. There is clearly a different order of castration here: whereas the masculine subject remains in a relationship of potential possession (he may one day come to possess phallic signifiers), the feminine subject is barred even this potential possession. The only alternative left to her is to come as close to ‘being’ this signifier as is possible, to make herself into the phallic signifier of desire. Importantly though, this attempt to incarnate the desire of the other is no longer the attempt to identify with the object of the mother’s desire – the paternal metaphor has long since done away with this wish – it is Symbolic rather than an Imaginary positioning, a taking up of a relation to the phallic signifier. We may now appreciate the importance of the notion of the phallus in Lacanian theory. It is the first signifier of sexual difference, a Symbolic function that pins us to either side of the division between the sexes. It is exactly this taking on of a relation to the phallic signifier – a signifier that orients us with regard to the questions of lack and the other’s desire for us – that determines sexual difference. The phallus is not an object, nor is it a reality. It is certainly not the actual male organ. Rather it is an empty marker of difference, a sign of what divides us from the Imaginary and inserts us into our predestined place within the Symbolic order. It is a means of positioning us relative to the Symbolic. For Lacan, sexuality operates as a law of sorts, something that is ‘enjoined’ on the subject. Individuals must take a choice that follows the lines of a fundamental opposition: having or not having the ‘phallus’. This as has been suggested, is a problematic, if not in fact impossible process, and Lacan is at pains to emphasise to us the constant and ongoing difficulties of this process which makes sexuality never pre-determined, never finalised. Psychoanalysis and feminism might be said to come together in their interests in the difficulties of this process, and in the attempts to further the explanatory and critical value of this concept.

Conclusion Lacanian psychoanalysis provides us with an impressive array of concepts with which we may attempt to understand the process of subject-formation and the taking on of sexual identity. Lacan is successful in reformulating many of Freud’s contributions to the question of sexual identity outside of the limitations of constant recourse to anatomy or biology. By further involving concepts of language and signification, by centralising the importance of the Symbolic, the Lacanian account of sexual difference is able to distance itself to a certain degree from the literal familial dynamics and anatomical grounds of reference required by Freud. Perhaps Lacan’s major achievement in this respect is in offering an approach to understanding sexual identification which is reducible neither to discourse and the world of social construction, on the one hand, nor to naturalist understandings which remain preoccupied with bodily or biological attributes as means of understanding sexuality. He offers a theoretical account which emphasises the precarious and unfinished nature of sexual identity in each human subject, but which is appreciative nonetheless of how sexual identity is legislated within each speaking being, imposed like a law of desire and prohibition, which requires us to take up a ‘sexed’ position within the Symbolic. The question of course remains as to whether the many complex and obscure

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theoretical formulations that Lacan offers us are the best co-ordinates within which to understand the conceptual and political challenges of sexual identity within patriarchal contexts. Do we necessarily want to inherit Freud’s framework of ideas, to apply, albeit in a more sophisticated manner, the polarity of possessing or lacking the phallus (in Freud), or potentially having or potentially being the phallic signifier (in Lacan) as means of understanding sexual difference? The notion of the phallic signifier has, without doubt, been a profound and challenging theoretical contribution of Lacanian psychoanalysis. It has been one that a number of feminists have been at the forefront of advancing as a means of understanding sexual difference in symbolic and non-biological terms, apart from the dubious trappings of the idea of ‘penis envy’ (Mitchell 1974; Mitchell & Rose 1982; Ragland-Sullivan 1986). Other feminists who have explored Lacanian theory are less enthusiastic. Grosz (1990, 1992) is concerned that by elevating the phallus to the privileged position that Lacan accords it, the patriarchal gestures of Freud have simply been repeated at a higher level, that a sign of masculine privilege has come to be over-valued such that male dominance is implicitly naturalised. We may offer a more pragmatic problem with the concept of the phallic signifier: we have here an esoteric, often opaque and typically jargon-riddled idea that would seem extremely difficult to apply in practice. Additionally, one often gets the feeling that aspects of Lacanian theory are still in the process of construction, that they are as yet unfinished, in need of further refinement or, perhaps more pressingly, simplification. (Note that this chapter focuses on Lacan’s writings on sexual difference from the 1950s; his later formulations of what he comes to call ‘sexuation’, as advanced in the 1970s, add a significant level of theory to these ideas, attempting to formalise his theory of sexual difference with reference to the formulae of symbolic logic.) This issue aside, it seems important to note that the complexity of a set of ideas is itself not reason enough to cast them away. There is no reason why the political task of developing robust and counter-intuitive conceptualisations of sexuality and gender, as is part of the overarching agenda of this book, should necessarily be straightforward; practicality and immediacy of application are not the only bases upon which we should judge critical thought. A contention here is that the concept of the phallus seems rather overworked: not only is the phallus an Imaginary object of desire, it is also a signifier of lack, a signifier of desire, the first signifier of sexual difference. It seems an overdetermined concept – although then again perhaps this is precisely the point of a concept that Lacan describes as ‘a signifier without a signified’ (Evans 1992). Lacan does, however, make very large claims on the basis of this concept. Not only is the phallus the key signifier that governs access to the Symbolic, and language, not only is it the privileged signifier which determines sexual difference, it also plays its part, as operationalised in castration anxiety, in founding the human order itself (as in Mitchell 1982). More problematic yet perhaps is the inconsistency with which Lacan himself understands the phallus as a signifier privileged above all others (remember, it is the signifier which heralds the arrival of social law, the first ‘primal’ signifier which makes basic social differentiations possible). Derrida (1975), for one, argues that this is an untenable theorisation in as much as it contradicts the fundamental law of the signifier, as set up in Saussure’s (1977) original structural linguistic theory that suggests that signifiers only acquire value and meaning because they are different to other signifiers. Of course this is a valid

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contention: it makes no sense to speak of a ‘privileged signifier’ within the context of formal linguistics; then again, perhaps Lacan’s theoretical project is exactly to try and conceptualise how such a privileged signifier might exist, and what it might be. We might argue here that the validity of psychoanalytic concepts should not be seen as contingent on formal linguistics – this is not their ultimate level of justification. However we may feel about Lacan’s theoretical system and that of psychoanalysis more broadly, and wherever we take up a position regarding the debate as to whether psychoanalysis simply extends patriarchy or whether it diagnoses and explains it, it is hard to deny the fact that the discourse of psychoanalysis offers us, as a set of conceptual resources, a number of prospective critical instruments. Neither they, nor it, can simply be ignored.

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UWC Robben Island Mayibuye Archives

Chapter 6

Women as a minority group Gillian Finchilescu

The lamentable fact that inspired this book is that women are still in an unequal, subordinate position to men. Now, in the twenty-first century, there is still no society in which women have the same rights and privileges as men. The level of discrimination and amount of human rights accorded to women varies vastly across different races, cultures and countries, but these rights are always less than that of the men in that group. There are many approaches to explaining the causes, experiences and ramifications of gender inequity. This chapter will argue that conceptualising women as a social group – a minority group – provides useful insights into gender-based discrimination.

The ‘group’ crisis in social psychology Over the past three decades, the study of intergroup relations has become a central focus of social psychology. However, prior to the 1970s, not only was this topic relatively marginal within the discipline, but the way in which it was approached differed radically. During this period, social psychology flourished in the United States, dominated by the individualistic US approach to society. Within this approach society was constituted by a multiplicity of individuals. Social behaviour was viewed as the behaviour of individuals qua individuals within the social setting. The 1970 crisis emerged when certain social psychologists began to question this predominant focus of social psychology and its version of the ‘social’. A number of European and British psychologists argued that this bore little resemblance to society as they knew it. Most particularly, they decried the lack of theorising about groups and the nature of group behaviour. This is exemplified by the following quote from Moscovici commenting on the writing of social psychologists in the United States:

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As we read them and try to understand and assimilate the principles that guide them we must often conclude that they are strangers to us, that our experience does not tally with theirs, that our views of man, of reality and of history are different (1972: 18). This crisis saw the emergence of a new social psychology located mainly in Europe and the United Kingdom. With it began the explosion of research and theorising around intergroup relations, placing issues such as prejudice and discrimination in centre stage. The importance of group identity as a central feature of social life was acknowledged, as was the recognition that the group(s) to which an individual belongs fundamentally affects their behaviour, their experiences, their perceptions and understanding of the world.

Gender and knowledge The 1970s also saw another crisis that is relevant to this chapter. This was the feminist challenge to epistemology. Women in all fields of the human and social sciences began to question the absence or marginality of women, both as practitioners and as subjects of their disciplines. Theory and research were seen to reflect men and men’s experiences, excluding those of women (Bohan 1992; Harding 1987, 1991). Within psychology this gender bias was argued to emerge in a number of ways. Men were perceived as the embodiment of the ‘human being’, with woman either assumed to be part of this category or constructed as the deviant or inferior ‘other’ (Squire 1989). Thus, characteristics and behaviours traditionally attributed to men were considered to be ‘normal’ and ‘healthy’, while the ones most likely to be considered a symptom of mental disturbance were frequently associated with women (Chesler 1972; Williams 1979). The topics that dominated research in the social sciences were those of concern to men, while issues of relevance to women in particular were devalued or ignored. Further, many research studies were conducted using only men as participants, yet the results were argued to be applicable to everyone (Grady 1981; Holmes & Jorgensen 1971). Much research on ‘women’ and ‘sex’ at that time was aimed at establishing essential differences in the abilities, characteristics and behaviours of the sexes. Subsequent research has found that few of these differences could be attributed to biological sex. Most emerged from socialisation practices and social expectations, or in fact were spurious or a function of methodological bias in the research (Deaux 1976; Maccoby & Jacklin 1974; Wallston 1981). This crisis led to profound changes, particularly in psychology – to the extent that many students reading the preceding section will find it hard to believe that such positions existed. The years following these critiques saw an upsurge in research aimed at redressing the situation. Women’s issues and experiences became accepted as legitimate research questions. Even in topics not directly about women, it has been recognised that a gender focus is important for a valid understanding of human concerns. Many of the feministinspired developments have become incorporated into mainstream psychology. This is particularly noticeable in the case of research methodology. One of the early arguments made was that an understanding of women’s experiences could not come through traditional research methods (Griffin 1986; Reinharz 1983). Qualitative methods, such as unstructured interviews and discourse analysis were favoured. Such methodologies have now become widely accepted and are taught in most psychology departments.

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And what about social psychology? As with the other branches of the discipline, the crisis resulted in a ‘re-placing’ of women in theory and research. One of the first texts to exemplify this was Sue Wilkinson’s (1986) Feminist Social Psychology. This was followed a decade later by Feminist Social Psychologies (Wilkinson 1996). These books challenged existing theories and reconceptualised how women and gender are considered in social psychology. But most important these books present the political agenda of feminist social psychology as ‘part of the broader feminist struggle to dismantle social inequalities and to improve the conditions of women’s lives’ (Wilkinson 1996: 1). Thus women are seen less as a species-type category linked by biological commonalities, but as a social group who share a range of experiences and inequities by virtue of the political and power dynamics of their society. In summary, these two crises discussed, the intergroup and feminist challenges to traditional social psychology, provided the context for the central argument of this chapter. The feminist challenge argues that women should be construed as a social group – a minority group. The intergroup slant of social psychology provides the tools and perspectives that may enable a broad understanding of the forces that maintain discrimination against women.

Women as a minority group One of the first people to argue that women constitute a minority group was sociologist Helen Hacker (1951). Her paper is seminal in that it presents one of the first analyses of the position of women demonstrating dimensions that link it to other minority groups. In her paper, she compared the experiences and responses of women with that of AfricanAmericans (Negroes), which were argued to be a function of their mutual ‘caste-like’ status in society (see Hacker’s chart below). This shift to theorising women and gender in terms of a social group has been continued by other authors (see Burn 1996; Condor 1976; Deaux 1984; Reid 1988; Williams & Giles 1978). Negroes

Women 1. High social visibility

a. Skin colour, other ‘racial’ characteristics

a. Secondary sex characteristics

b. (Sometimes) distinctive dress – bandana, flashy clothes

b. Distinctive dress, skirts etc.

2. Ascribed attributes a. Inferior intelligence, smaller brain, less convoluted, scarcity of geniuses

a. Ditto

b. More free in instinctual gratifications More emotional, ‘primitive’ and childlike Imagined sexual prowess envied

b. Irresponsible, inconsistent, emotionally unstable. Lack strong super-ego. Women as ‘temptresses’

c. Common stereotype ‘inferior’

c. ‘Weaker’

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3. Rationalisations of status a. Thought all right in his place

a. Woman’s place is in the home

b. Myth of contented Negro

b. Myth of contented women – ‘feminine’ woman happy in subordinate role 4. Accommodation attitudes

a. Supplicatory whining, intonation of voice

a. Rising inflection, smiles, laughs, downward glances

b. Deferential manner

b. Flattering manner

c. Concealment of real feelings

c. ‘Feminine wiles’

d. Outwit ‘white folks’

d. Outwit ‘menfolk’

e. Careful study of points at which dominant group is susceptible to influence

e. Ditto

f. Fake appeals for directives; show of ignorance

f. Appearance of helplessness

5. Discrimination a. Limitations on education – should fit ‘place’ in society

a. Appearance of helplessness

b. Confined to traditional jobs – barred from supervisory positions. Their competition is feared. No family precedents for new aspirations

b. Ditto

c. Deprived of political importance

c. Ditto

d. Social and professional segregation

d. Ditto

e. More vulnerable to criticism

e. Ditto. For example conduct in bars 6. Similar problems

a. Roles not clearly defined, but in flux as result of social change Conflict between achieved status and ascribed status Figure 6.1 Hacker’s (1951: 65) chart comparing the (caste-like) status of women and African-Americans

What does it mean to be a minority group? Discrimination and unequal treatment are a central feature of a minority group’s experience, with far-reaching effects. Members of minority groups experience themselves as being stigmatised by their group membership. They are continually placed in the position of being the ‘other’, of being different and even of not being quite ‘normal’. Above all, this stigmatisation can result in the group members not feeling quite at home in society, made to feel that they do not quite belong in a society where they may, in fact, be the numerical majority. The responses and experiences of minority

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group members to their situation will be discussed later. In the next section, we discuss what is meant by prejudice and discrimination.

Discrimination and prejudice There are many manifestations of discrimination, of varying levels of severity. The manifestations are classified into two major categories: structural discrimination and interpersonal discrimination. Structural discrimination Socio-cultural discrimination. This occurs when the culture and norms of the group in power are promoted as the only legitimate world view. This may manifest in the language, the history, the beliefs, activities and concerns of the minority group being rendered invisible. These may be actively repressed or simply ignored, having no representation in the social institutions and activities. This form of discrimination is certainly applicable to women. Previously we have discussed how science and knowledge have been dominated by male concerns. In ordinary life we are bombarded with information and images in the media that portray men’s lives and perspectives. For instance, almost all sports presented in the media are male sports. Women are shown competing only if the sport is one that men also engage in (e.g. hockey, swimming, tennis). The money supporting the sport or given as prizes is grossly inequitable. To illustrate, the prize money available for women is considerably less than for men in tennis competitions. At Wimbledon, in 2004, the prize for the winner of the men’s singles was 42 000 pounds sterling more than for the winner of the women’s singles (British Tennis News 2004). In addition, certain cultural practices are detrimental for women. For instance, cultural practices such as female genital mutilation which is widely practiced in the Middle East and Africa (though only to a limited extent in South Africa) is profoundly harmful to women, on both a physical and psychological level (Amnesty International 2004). Discriminatory laws. The South African Constitution formally disallows discrimination on the grounds of sex. In addition, affirmative action was conceived to encompass women, as a formerly disadvantaged group. But, as noted by the ‘More promises than progress’ report cited in Morna’s article in the Mail & Guardian (2005: 31), ‘there is a large gap between gender-sensitive laws, policies and machineries, and their implementation on the ground’. There are still traditional practices in the country that interfere with constitutional advances. Practice, such as the traditional laws of inheritance, land ownership, and polygamy often places women in a disadvantaged position. Further, the amount of sexual and domestic violence suffered by women in this country is one of the highest in the world (Southern African Regional Poverty Network n.d.). It is also worth noting that in many countries in the world, women do not have basic human rights, such as the right to independence, to freedom of movement, to own property, access to education, to equal representation within the law, the right to vote. Even within the countries that have constitutions or laws that entrench gender equality, women still earn less than men for the same occupations, and are under-represented in politics and positions of leadership.

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Genocide. Genocide is defined as the attempt to systematically exterminate a group of people defined by their race, religion, political persuasion, nationality or sexual orientation. The twentieth century was marked by a number of genocides. The Campaign to End Genocide n.d.) identifies nine genocides during the last century, the victimised groups being: Armenian Christians in Turkey (1915–1923); Jews, Ukranians, farmers and general population in the former Soviet Union (1918–1921; 1930–1938); European Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and homosexuals in Germany and other Nazi-controlled territories (1941–1945); the Hutu in Burundi (1972); ethnic Vietnamese and Chinese nationals, Muslims, and Buddhist monks in Cambodia (1975–1979); Indonesian Communist Party supporters in Indonesia and East Timor in 1965–1966, 1972 and 1999); members of the Baha’i religion in Iran (1979 to present); southern ethnic and religious groups in Sudan (1983 to present); Tutsis in Rwanda (1994). While women have not been subjected to systematic extermination in quite the same way, the practice of female infanticide in many Third World countries is argued to amount to this (Jones 1999–2000). Jones’ report focused particularly on rural India and China where female infanticide is still common. Both societies are highly patriarchal, where girls are perceived to be of little value. In India the practice is argued to be exacerbated by the dowry system, which demands that the parents of girls pay a large dowry to the family into which the girl is to marry. In China, it is the one-child family policy that contributes to the problem. Interpersonal discrimination and prejudice Negative social cognitions. The image of a group is encompassed in processes known as social cognitions. These shared perceptions and beliefs are termed stereotypes, social schemas, attitudes and attributions. See the insert below for the definitions of these processes. A feature of minority groups is that these cognitions are generally negative and derogatory. However, these cognitions are not fixed or absolute. They vary as a function of the relationship that the minority group has with the majority group, and with time. For instance, if the minority group is perceived to be in competition with the majority group or disputing its subordinate position, then the stereotypes and attributions tend to be more virulent. Social events are also known to alter the nature of the cognitions (Augoustinos & Walker 1995; Brown 1995). The negative and biased social cognitions attributed to minority groups have very real effects on their members. Aside from the pernicious experience of being de-individualised, members of minority groups are interacted with in terms of these stereotypes. Thus, if the current stereotype holds that a minority group is intellectually inferior, this perception may influence how teachers and potential employers view individual members of the group. Anything the individuals say or do will be viewed through this lens, resulting in a selffulfilling dynamic. Stereotypes are also used to impose and maintain the superior position of the majority group. Thus, the negative characteristics that are commonly promulgated are those that would militate against minority group members achieving equality with the dominant group, while the positive characteristics are those that reinforce the group’s subordinate position. The strength and power of negative social cognitions depends on the hegemony of the majority group. If the majority group is very powerful, its perspectives will be pervasive and these cognitions come to be represented as ‘fact’. This may result in the members of the minority group internalising these stereotypes into their self-perceptions.

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While minority groups may hold negative stereotypes of the majority group, they lack the power to disseminate and enforce their perspectives. Social cognitions Social schema: defined as ‘a mental structure which contains general expectations and knowledge of the world’ (Augoustinos & Walker 1995: 32). Schemas are built up from our experience, from what we are told or learn from peers, family and the media. Schemas direct our own actions and govern what behaviour to expect of others. Schemas are finely attuned to the context. So, for example, in a restaurant we do not go up to the counter to be served whereas we would in a fast-food establishment. Schemas are often so ingrained that we only recognise them when they are violated. Most societies have particularly strong schema about the way men and women are expected to dress and behave. These are referred to as ‘gender schemas’. Stereotypes: the traits and characteristics that make up our image of members of a group. The term, ‘stereotype’ was first coined by Lippman (1922). He took the term from the printing process where a stereotype referred to a template or mould that was used to duplicate pictures and patterns. Stereotypes are thus socially shared mental templates purporting to represent social groups. Stereotypes have been the subject of an enormous amount of research in social psychology. There are numerous theoretical approaches to stereotyping, and debates range about their accuracy, whether they are merely a cognitive process, whether there is an emotional or affective component and what functions they serve. Of particular interest to this paper are the points raised by Tajfel (1981). These are that stereotypes are value-laden, and as such serve to accentuate differences between social groups. Attributions: refer to the causes or reasons we ascribe for events and people’s behaviour. There are a number of attribution theories that attempt to explain what leads to attributions being made, what types of cause are ascribed and what factors influence these causes. One of the main dimensions of causation is the locus – whether the behaviour is attributed to internal (the actor’s personal characteristics, abilities or effort) or external factors (stemming from the nature of the situation or task, or to luck). Researchers discovered that intergroup biases influence this cognitive process. Attributions are frequently selected that serve the interests of the ingroup and are detrimental to the outgroup. Thus, successes or positive behaviour of the ingroup would be ascribed to internal factors, while such events in the outgroup would be ascribed to external factors. In contrast, failures or negative behaviours of the ingroup are more likely to be attributed to external factors, whereas they would be attributed to internal factors in the case of the outgroup (Finchilescu 1991). Attitudes: essentially evaluations that reflect an individual’s orientation to some object or referent (Augoustinos & Walker 1995). Attitudes are considered to be a relatively stable disposition that are learned or acquired by the individual. However, attitudes are not simply a feature of the individual – they are socially shared, conveyed through discourses and other forms of social communication.

The stereotypes and attributions made about women abound. Women are frequently ascribed traits such as being weak, emotional, unable to reason logically, intuitive, nurturing. Note that being weak, emotional and illogical would preclude women from most high-level professions and from leadership positions, while being intuitive and nurturing supports women’s role in the home. In all societies, there are strong schema about the way in which

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‘proper’ women should behave. This may range from the way they walk, how they dress, what language they use, what activities they are allowed and which places they are allowed to frequent. Derogatory behaviour. Minority group members are frequently subjected to insults and demeaning behaviour (including avoidance). This is particularly the case when the individuals concerned are perceived as rejecting their subordinate position. Women who are employed in a male environment, walk the streets unaccompanied by men, or enter a bar or restaurant without the protection of a man, frequently experience insulting behaviour from men. This may range from derogatory comments to sexual advances and harassment. Discriminatory behaviour. This refers to minority group members receiving differential treatment at work, in education, and other walks of life. The behaviour may range from individual slights to with-holding of resources. Women experience this in many ways. From being ignored or not heard at committee meetings, being overlooked for promotion or certain jobs, being paid less than a man would be for the same work, to being discouraged from studying certain subjects at schools or tertiary educational institutions. Violence. Minority groups have, in certain times and places, been subjected to violence of various kinds. Hate crimes and lynching are the most severe of these. Women are certainly the recipients of such violence. The massacre of women engineering students at the University of Montréal’s School of Engineering in 1989 stands out as a particular instance of such violence (Wikipedia 2005). It is also argued that rape, sexual assault and domestic abuse fit into this category. This violence is perpetrated on women and girls because of their gender.

Social identity theory There are a number of theories of intergroup relations within social psychology. The majority of these attempt to explain why members of the majority or dominant group are prejudiced against a minority group. The focus is on the people who are prejudiced or behaving in a discriminatory manner. Social identity theory (SIT) stands out as one of the few theories that have attempted to explain the behaviour and cognitions of the minority group as well as the majority group. It thus stands as the most useful framework to use in understanding the position of women. A thorough discussion of SIT is beyond the scope of the chapter. Readers are referred to Tajfel and Turner (1979) for the original explication of the theory, or to one of the many texts that describe the theory (e.g. Hogg & Abrams 1988). However, a brief outline is necessary. SIT argues that the group(s) to which we belong make up part of our self-concept, termed ‘our social identity’. We all belong to many groups in society, some of which we are born into (i.e. are ascribed) such as our race, nationality, religion, gender, and some which we actively join for various lengths of time, such as being a supporter of Morocco Swallows, a student at a certain university, a member of the Communist Party, a member of Yvonne Chaka Chaka’s fanclub. For any of these group memberships to have significance for our self-concept, we must identify with the group and feel committed to it. The fundamental assumption behind SIT is that we are driven to seek positive distinctiveness, i.e. to feel we are ‘the best’, enhanced and affirmed. This leads us to compare the group we belong to (our ingroup) with a relevant outgroup, in order to ascertain whether or not our group is superior

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(i.e. has higher status). The dimensions of comparison must have relevance and must be important to both groups. If the comparison process leads group members to perceive their ingroup as inferior (lower in status) to the outgroup, this has a detrimental effect on their self-esteem. Their need for positive distinctiveness is not fulfilled. The response of members of ‘lower status’ groups falls somewhere along the continuum from social mobility to social competition and social action. Tajfel (1981) argued that a number of factors determine this response. These factors are: ❍ the permeability of the group boundaries, and ❍ the security of the status hierarchy. The permeability of the group boundaries refers to whether it is feasible for members of a group to move to another group. The boundaries may be perceived to be impermeable if there are external factors such as laws (e.g. caste laws in India or the old apartheid laws) or defining features of the group that prevent this (e.g. biological sex); or the individual feels an internal commitment to or identification with the group that makes the idea of leaving the group unthinkable. If the boundaries are impermeable, social mobility is not an option. The security of the status hierarchy depends on whether the subordination of the low status group (and the social ramifications of this) is perceived to be stable (unchangeable) and legitimate (fair). If the status hierarchy is perceived to be insecure, then the low status group is likely to move to reject their subordinate status and go into competition with the high status group. In extreme cases this may lead to social action in the form of riots and revolution. Tajfel did not believe it likely that in the modern world, with global media and universality of ideas and news, it was possible to have a situation where the hierarchy between social groups is secure. He thus addressed most of his attention to the behaviour and strategies of groups where the hierarchy between them is insecure. Tajfel (1981) argued that for high status groups, the reason for the insecurity was important. If the insecurity is due to instability, particularly because of threat from the low status group, the most likely behaviour would be to intensify prejudice and discriminatory behaviour. On the other hand, if the members of the high status group perceive their superiority and the ramifications of their advantage to be illegitimate, unjust or unfair, their high status will not provide positive distinctiveness. Some may respond to this by seeking further justifications for their superiority while others may reject their group and ‘side’ with the low status group. Social mobility by high status group members, if boundaries are permeable, is likely if the threat from the low status group is overwhelming or if the intergroup situation is perceived to violate moral values of justice and fairness. In the case of members of the subordinate group, their low status will contravene their need for positive distinctiveness. If the conditions are conducive, and there are no social factors preventing it, members may choose to leave the group. For the low status group, the distinction between stability and legitimacy as the root of insecurity is not important. Once there is a perception that the status hierarchy is not fixed and immutable, perceptions of illegitimacy are bound to follow. If the situation is not conducive to leaving the group, the low status group may adopt a number of strategies. Members may go into competition with the high status group, attempting to ‘… become, through action and reinterpretation of group characteristics, more like the superior group’ (Tajfel 1981: 283). Alternatively they

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In South Africa women comprise: ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍

52.2% of the population 54.8% of registered voters 4.6% of magistrates 17.3% of mayors 29.6% of municipal councillors 6.3% of municipal managers 28.2% of members of local government 98% of domestic workers 29.5% of doctors 2.5% of the prison population 43.8% of the workforce 44.8% of those earning less than R1 600 pm 52.3% of the unemployed 19% of the news sources in the media 58% of the HIV-infected adults in sub-Saharan Africa 19.4% of parliamentarians in the southern African Region 15.4% of parliamentarians in the world 49.1% of the working population

Gender violence causes more death and disability among women aged 15 to 44 than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents or war. More women are killed by their intimate partners in South Africa than anywhere else in the world. Black women who head their own households are by far the most marginalised in the labour market, with an employment rate of 32% compared with 82% for white men. Young women represent 62% of young people living with HIV and Aids. On average, women in the developing world walk six kilometers each day to collect water, carrying the equivalent of a suitcase.

may reinterpret the characteristics that marked their inferiority, as positive or find other dimensions of comparison on which they are superior. Social action, protests and ultimately revolution are other strategies. It must be noted that Tajfel died before he had time to do more than outline the theory. Many researchers have explored and expanded the theory. In addition, there have been a range of different interpretations of the theory (Rubin & Hewstone 2004). With this warning in place, we turn now to consider the relevance of SIT to women and gender. A number of researchers have used SIT to understand gender relations, the earliest of which were Williams and Giles (1978).

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Insights emerging from SIT Variation in women’s behaviour. The intergroup approach to gender sees men and women as two ‘competing’ social groups. Men are perceived as the dominant group and women as the subordinate one. Women differ greatly in their thinking about their group. These positions can be arrayed on a dimension ranging from the ‘traditional woman’ on one pole and ‘feminists’ on the other. In general, the traditional role of women is perceived to be that of daughter, wife and mother. Their position in the world is thus determined by men, fathers or husbands. They have limited independence and frequently have little say in the decisions that affect them or their family. Women who reject this subordinate position and strive for women’s rights are generally categorised as ‘feminists’. It is argued that traditional women do not identify with women as a social category and do not feel they are connected in some kind of ‘shared fate’ with other women, or see their gender as central to their identity. Gurin and Markus (1989) argue that these women view their gender almost as a physical attribute in much the same way they recognise that they are tall or short, blonde or brunette. Feminists, on the other hand, identify with the category ‘women’ and see their fate linked with that of other women. This distinction has been supported by research – women who support feminism have a higher sense of group consciousness than women who do not (Burn et al 2000; Gurin & Markus 1989; Gurin & Townsend 1986). Within the SIT framework, the behaviour of traditional women and feminists has been analysed in terms of security of social comparisons. Traditional women are argued to see their gender’s low status as legitimate and stable. The self-hatred or negative ingroup feelings that have been noted in a variety of ethnic and race groups at certain periods in time (e.g. Jews, African-Americans) also occur with women. The negative stereotypes associated with women are accepted and the group is held in contempt. As the group’s boundary is for the most part impermeable (short of a sex change), social mobility is not a real option. However, a form of psychological leaving of the group may occur in the sense that the individual can reject or deny their membership of the group. Consider for instance, the career woman who is successful in the male world, but tries to keep other women out. By achieving her status she is showing that she is as good as a man, in fact should be an honorary man. All those stereotypes of women as incompetent, inferior, etc. are accepted as true but are not seen as applying to her. Another strategy of women who accept their group’s negative status is to direct their competition against other women. They then attempt to gain positive selfesteem by being better than other women – a better home-maker, a better mother, more attractive, more adept at ‘catching men’. Feminists are conceived within the SIT framework to be women who perceive the status hierarchy between men and women to be illegitimate and unstable. Hence they are likely to engage in social competition or social action. A number of strategies have been identified that achieve this: ❍ Redefining as positive the characteristics of women that previously had negative attributions. For example, being ‘emotional’, which was previously construed as an insult, has in recent times been recast into being sensitive, intuitive, in touch with one’s feelings. This is now seen as a positive trait. The success of this redefinition is evidenced by the upsurge of interest in the new concept termed ‘emotional intelligence’ (see Goleman 1995; Salovey & Mayer 1990). This concept includes such facilities as self-awareness, empathy and ability to manage relationships – all typically ‘female’ traits. Emotional

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intelligence is argued be as important if not more important than general intelligence in predicting success. Needless to say, the concept is now seen to also apply to men. Constructing new dimensions of comparison on which women are superior. An example of this strategy is the glorification of motherhood and nurturance. These qualities are argued to forge a special link between women, the environment, the family and the community (Acholonu nd). This matrix is central to the philosophy of ‘motherism’ and motherist movements, which are conceived as an African alternative to Western feminism. Motherism also rejects male domination and patriarchal oppression, but sees women’s identities as mothers as the basis for mobilisation (Hassim & Gouws 2000). Social protest. From the earliest days of feminism in the early 1900s, women have used social action to protest injustices and demand social equality. Protest marches, political campaigns, even radical action, are strategies that have been used by women in many countries, including South Africa (see Walker 1982). In some countries, these succeeded in bringing women enormous social advances.

Variation in men’s behaviour. Sexism is understood here as the gender-specific term for prejudice against women. It includes all the negative attitudes and behaviours directed at women. SIT predicts that men’s sexism will increase the more they feel threatened by women, and that the content of the negative cognitions will adapt to meet the challenge (Maltby & Day 2003). At the most basic level, men’s response may be abuse and violence. It is frequently argued that domestic violence emerges from men feeling their position is threatened. However, in places where women have made significant gains towards equality, the raw sexism of open denigration of women as inferior has given way to a more subtle form. This modern sexism manifests as a denial that there is still discrimination against women and opposes any programmes or policies aimed at supporting women. It is difficult to identify as sexism as it is generally couched in other values, e.g. hard work, meritocracy (Swim et al 1995; Swim & Cohen 1997). Men have typically attempted to deal with the threat posed by women’s demand for equality by vilifying the organisations through which these demands were made. This occurred with the suffragettes in the early 1900s and continues today with respect to feminists. Feminists were – and are – portrayed as man-hating, unnatural, ‘dykes’, mentally unstable women, in an attempt to denigrate their demands. In more recent times, there have been more clandestine and pervasive responses aimed at fighting women’s advances. Faludi (1992) argues that this ‘backlash’ pervades the general media with the message that women are now equal, but are increasingly miserable: The prevailing wisdom of the past decade has supported one, and only one, answer to this riddle: it must be all that equality that’s causing all that pain. Women are unhappy precisely because they are free. Women are enslaved by their own liberation. They have grabbed at the golden ring of independence, only to miss the one ring that really matters. They have gained control of their fertility, only to destroy it. They have pursued their own professional dreams – and lost out on the greatest female adventure. The women’s movement, as we are told time and again, has proved women’s own worst enemy (Faludi 1992: 2).

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In addition to this new stereotype of women as successful but unhappy, there have been enormous efforts to establish beauty and attractiveness as a central dimension of comparison. As women have proved to be as competent as men in almost every arena of life, the old stereotypes that women’s only worth lay in their nurturing and home-making capacities has fallen away. Now the new view of women’s worth is held to be their appearance. The ideal is now of young, beautiful, thin women, preferably well endowed. Such women (generally models and actresses) are the ones who are most commonly seen in the media, and hence seen to have status and credibility. Many girls and women strive to meet this standard through such means as diets and plastic surgery (Faludi 1992; Wolf 1990). Aside from the extreme discomfort and unhappiness this causes, it is ultimately a useless exercise. No-one can stay young forever, and there is a limit to which one’s genetic make-up can be altered by surgery, dieting or cosmetics. But the most invidious aspect of this new ideal, is that it is enormously time consuming and detrimental to self-esteem. Striving for unrealistic and unattainable beauty does not leave much time or energy to pursue educational or professional goals, or community or political involvement. Further, being attractive leaves women particularly vulnerable to sexual harassment. This brings us to the most vicious of men’s responses to threat – sexual violence in the form of rape and sexual harassment. Violence and harassment have the effect of limiting women’s movements and discouraging them from entering certain spaces. Brownmiller (1973) was one of the first authors to make this explicit: ‘Rape has played a critical function. It is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear’ (5). However, there are men who recognise the illegitimacy of their dominance. In many parts of the world, including South Africa, there have been men who have supported the struggle for women’s liberation. More recently have been the campaigns and marches of men protesting sexual violence against women. It is also important to note that South Africa has one of the most progressive and women-friendly constitutions. The ideological principles that emerged from the struggle for liberation from apartheid and racial discrimination encompassed sensitivity to women’s position. While this has not pervaded at grassroots level (as evidenced by South Africa’s alarming rate of sexual violence), there is at least the policy base on which to establish women’s equality.

Critiques of the minority group argument: the feminist–non-feminist dichotomy A basic assumption made by researchers such as Williams and Giles (1978) is that feminists are women who perceive the illegitimacy and instability of the male-dominant–femalesubordinate hierarchy. Traditional or non-feminist women are assumed to see this hierarchy as legitimate and stable. Thus, they are assumed to accept women’s inferiority. It is also argued that non-feminists will feel self-hatred for themselves as women, which has a negative implication for self-esteem. This assumption has been challenged from a number of angles. Condor’s (1986) research suggests that traditional women do not necessarily see themselves as inferior to men. Their lack of desire to compete with men may not rest in a feeling of inferiority but in the belief that men and women are complementary. Condor also found that many of these women argued that their lives of interdependence with men were much better than the independence

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desired by feminists. Another objection to this assumption is that there are many women who reject patriarchy and strive for equality, but do not identify themselves as feminists. Many women in the third world rejected feminism because the movement was seen as a Western, American and European phenomenon, hence alien to their culture. As discussed earlier, in Africa the concept of motherism emerged as an alternative movement through which to fight against gender discrimination. Even in Western countries, many women do not identify as feminists. This is in part due to the negative image of feminists perpetrated as part of the backlash against women’s liberation, and in part due to the unrealistic and unaccommodating positions taken by various factions within the women’s movement (Faludi 1992; Wolf 1993). Multiple group memberships Women belong to many different ethnic and racial groups, nationalities, social classes and religions. These are the common ascribed groups that divide the social world. And there are many other groups to which we belong with variable levels of commitment. A major critique of the women as minority group thesis lies in these crossed or intersecting group memb-erships. Membership of other groups, particularly of other ascribed groups such as race or social class, are frequently perceived as more powerful in determining one’s experiences in society than gender. This mitigates against the perception of ‘common fate’ that is so important in determining group identification (Gurin & Markus 1989). Thus, a black woman may feel a strong sense of identification with other black women, but feeling of identification with white women will be considerably weaker than with black men. The social psychological research on crossed-group membership suggests that one of the groups will generally take precedence, but the amount of favouritism and bias is generally affected by the number of shared groups. Ingroup favouritism tends to be stronger where both group memberships are shared, and weakest or negative when there are no shared groups (Brown 1995). The influence of multiple identities – particularly that of race-ethnicity × class × sexual orientation – on gender has been theorised within Women’s Studies and debated in many feminist political forums (see Anthias et al 1992; Lewis 1993; Weber 1998). The implication of the multiple memberships is that the interests of the most socially powerful faction receive the most attention, which in general is that of white, middle-class, heterosexual women. Women in the less powerful factions are thus alienated and marginalised. A discussion of the debate is too extensive to be covered here, as is the question of whether it has caused a fatal fragmentation of the women’s movement. However, at issue here is whether it negates the concept of women as a minority group. We would argue that this is not so. Within all possible combinations of intersecting groups, women are always subordinate to men. The form the subordination takes and the degree of discrimination involved vary greatly. The explanation of the behaviour and perceptions of men and women outlined by SIT will thus be useful, though they have to be adapted to the relevant context. It should also be noted that the intersection of multiple group memberships is not unique – the African-Americans who were involved in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s consisted of different social classes, religions and political persuasions. This did not negate their shared identity or deflect their purpose.

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The family and interdependence of men and women There is one circumstance that makes the situation of men and women unique. Many men and women are locked into an intimate interdependence of family relationships. While it could be argued that some master–servant relationships were equally interdependent, the members of most minority groups live and procreate separately from the dominant group. Unfortunately, even if a man has a positive, caring relationship with his wife and daughters, it does not mean that his behaviour and attitudes to other women will be affected. The process known in social psychology as ‘hedging’ enables people to segment off the members of the outgroup whom they like/love and see them as different from the rest of their group. People are thus able to live with many contradictions.

Conclusion The aim of this chapter was to argue that our understanding of the social situation of women is enhanced if women are conceptualised as a social group, and gender relations considered an instance of intergroup relations. Women as a group were demonstrated to suffer the same forms of prejudice and discrimination as other minority (e.g. ethnic and racial) groups. Social Identity Theory (SIT) was presented as an intergroup theory which provides useful insights into gender relations, such as explaining the implications of women’s level of identification with their gender and the resultant behaviour. Prejudice against women, sexism, was also considered through this lens. The responses of both men and women were discussed. The chapter ended with a discussion of the critiques of the ‘women as a minority group’ position. While there is certainly some merit in the critiques raised, it was argued that they do not invalidate the central argument. The tools of social psychology are particularly valuable for understanding women’s position in the social world. Clearly, there are many arenas in which this approach is limited, and arenas where, for instance, intra-psychic theories are more useful. However, it is hard to envisage any situation where there is no social context, and where interaction with the social does not profoundly affect behaviour or cognitions (Tajfel 1981; Tajfel & Fraser 1978).

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Section 2

De/re-constructing psychological knowledge about gender

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Z. Muholi

Chapter 7

Sexualities Tamara Shefer and Cheryl-Ann Potgieter Introduction This chapter attempts to problematise the way in which psychology, both nationally and globally, has viewed sexuality. Psychology as a discipline and practice has tended to both idealise and normalise heterosexuality, while it has pathologised alternative forms of sexual practice and identity, such as homosexuality, bisexuality, transgender, transsexuality, and so on. The chapter begins by highlighting the heteronormativity and homophobia inherent in psychology and explores contemporary research on sexualities in South Africa that speaks of alternative experiences in sexual development and experience. The chapter then moves on to look at heterosexuality, which has received little critical attention, particularly within psychology, as it has been assumed to be normal and natural. More recently however, due to the efforts of feminism and the global imperative to address the HIV/Aids epidemic, heterosexual practices have been put under scrutiny. The chapter discusses heterosexual sex (heterosex) within five main themes drawn from the literature: gender and power inequalities in sexual relationships; male power and women’s lack of negotiation in sexual relationships; coercive and violent practices in sexuality; the developmental and social context of masculinity and femininity in understanding heterosexual power relations; and the impact of HIV/Aids on heterosex. It should be noted that while the chapter looks broadly at sexualities, it covers predominantly the literature on homosexuality and heterosexuality. This relates partly to the marginalisation of other forms of gender or sexual identities or experiences (for example, transgender, transsexual, and intersex) in psychology and in the South African literature more broadly, but also the constraints of space for the chapter. On the other hand, some of the debates around multiple sexualities/genders are covered together with a critique of psychology’s role in pathologising alternative modes and practices of gender and sexuality in Estian Smit’s contribution (chapter 15) in this edition.

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It should be noted that this chapter is written from a feminist social constructionist framework which uses both the lens of a gendered approach while understanding all aspects of human identity and interaction as constructed within social and historical context and enmeshed with power relations. Thus, sexuality is not something essential and universal, rather it takes on meaning in a particular social realm. Also important is our acknowledgement that the author or researcher is always personally positioned in a particular political, social, ideological space. As authors we are aware that we write from a particular location informed by our personal histories that is not simply individual but overlaid by our social identities, including gender, ‘race’, class, and so on, as well as our theoretical positions. Thus we write this chapter taking particular cognisance of the point made by De la Rey (1997: 194): ‘No matter what the method, we need to be conscious of our own positioning in relation to the researched and the social and political context in which the research occurs’. When we assess the literature and theories covered here we are thus aware of the space that we occupy as a result of various contextualised factors.

Sexuality under scrutiny Sexuality in South Africa has been historically repressed at a national and socio-cultural level. Until the new dispensation in 1994, sex education was absent from the national curriculum, and a moralistic, prohibitive policy on any sexual literature or media was followed by the state. In South Africa today, sexuality has been thrown into the spotlight, both through the attention given to HIV/Aids and the challenge to halt sexual violence, now shown to be endemic in South African communities. While the Constitution clearly protects sexual rights, and there is evidently more space for alternative sexual practices and identities in South Africa with legal victories (such as the recent recognition of legal relationships between homosexual partners) securing constitutional and social gains in lived experience, South Africa remains a highly homophobic, heterosexist culture where heterosexuality is privileged above other forms of sexuality as the ideal, correct form of sexuality and relationship. There is, however, a growing body of work that highlights the multiplicity of sexual practices and identities in South Africa, as well as the continued stigmatisation of those who choose non-heterosexual lifestyles.

Marginalised sexualities in South Africa The Bill of Rights specifically, and the Constitution generally, is probably the most important document for lesbian and gay people in this country (Issack 2005). As Potgieter has argued elsewhere (Potgieter 1997b; 2003), to understand the present trends in psychological research on homosexuality and other forms of alternative sexuality a historical perspective is important. While there has been a deafening silence in South African psychology regarding homosexuality, the little research that has been conducted has followed international trends. The following section illustrates how both internationally and within the South African context psychology has presented the homosexual as sick, in need of help, and/or as morally flawed within a discourse of sin. In recent years, as a result of pressure from activist organisations and gay and lesbian psychologists, the emphasis shifted

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in psychology so that the homosexual has been constructed as ‘healthy’ while persons holding negative attitudes towards homosexuality have been constructed as the ‘unhealthy’. In South Africa researchers have explored the impact that psychological research has had on specific racial laws of the country (see Nicholas & Cooper 1990). Although not well addressed, it is evident that psychological research similarly impacted on the apartheid laws and practices regarding homosexuality (as elaborated in box 2).1

Shifting psychological conceptualisations of homosexuality The conceptualisation of homosexuality in psychology and the social sciences in general has been marked by a shift in perspective from essentialism to constructionism. The essentialist perspective defined human sexuality as biologically rooted in a drive that sought expression in heterosexual relationships, characteristically with a procreative purpose. Any deviation from this ‘natural’ form of sexuality, such as homosexuality, was judged pathological. Historically, clinical psychological and psychiatric research provided support for the essentialist view on homosexuality (see Henry 1941; Terman & Miles 1936). Regarding female homosexuality most of the research echoed the sentiments of Terman and Miles’s and Henry’s early research, which not only essentialised a homosexual identity but also gendered the identity. The female homosexual in their understanding was sick, had most likely been exposed to ‘bad’ childrearing practices and was not in a position to take on adult responsibilities (Potgieter 1997). Most of the psychological literature of this period described lesbianism as a form of immaturity, an ego deficit, a narcissistic condition or developmental delay. Terman and Miles (1936) in drawing a conclusion regarding the ‘cause’ of homosexuality believed that although biological factors could play some role, psychological conditioning played a major role. These conclusions were supported by those of Henry (1941). These researchers had thus moved away from the position that a biological defect was the primary cause of homosexuality and in fact took other factors (e.g. psychological) into account. However, the belief existed that medical science could be utilised to the homosexual’s ‘benefit’. Given the dominance of the medicalisation of sexuality during this period, the discourse that homosexuals (both male and female) ‘could be healed’ by interventions such as shock therapy is in keeping with the typical interventions of the period. The use of electroshock therapy to ‘normalise’ or ‘re-programme’ gay conscripts in the South African Defence Force (SADF) during the apartheid years was exposed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). These attempts at re-programming gay men into heterosexuality were often against the person’s will (PSYSSA 1997; Van Zyl et al, 1999). Kinsey’s Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male of 1948 and his subsequent Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female of 1953 presented statistics and a discourse which radicalised understandings of homosexuality. His findings indicated that a large percentage of people had homosexual experiences, and he also took the position that homosexuality was a healthy expression of sexuality. Although still subscribing to the essentialist notion that sexuality was biologically rooted, he argued that the sexual instinct could be reflected in a variety of ways. Kinsey’s position, and the resulting shift in the discourse around sexuality in the social sciences, was reflected in the psychological research conducted on homosexuality. Many of the studies reported that lesbians were as ‘psychologically adjusted’ and as healthy as

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their heterosexual counterparts (see Armon 1960; Hopkins 1969; Saghir & Robins 1971). The research produced by academics was reflective of the cultural context as the period around 1970 opened up a ‘new’ approach to the issue at hand. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s articles were published which depathologised homosexuality. In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of psychiatric disorders. At this point the women’s movement in the United States was a dominant voice and the gay rights movement was also gaining momentum. It can be argued that although homosexuality was depathologised during this period researchers did not go as far as to challenge the medicalisation of sexuality. This is clear from the fact that homosexuals were first defined as ‘sick’ and then as ‘just as healthy as heterosexuals’. It has to be recognised that while the latter approach has shortcomings (see Kitzinger 1987; Potgieter 1997b) it has been important in depathologising homosexuality as well as achieving strategic gains. The discourse that depathologises the homosexual and pathologises instead those persons who hold negative attitudes towards ‘other sexualities’ may sound progressive, but essentially does not challenge the medicalisation paradigm – it merely shifts the patient status from one grouping to another. Persons who hold negative attitudes towards homosexuals are labelled ‘homophobes’ and are seen to be suffering from homophobia. It is argued by Kitzinger (1987) that in a sense no progress has been made, as it is merely a diagnostic reversal of the discourse underpinned by medicalised pathology. Many psychological researchers are not as critical of the homophobic diagnosis as Kitzinger. This is evidenced by the large number of scales and studies which have been devised to diagnose homophobia. If one does a scope of the literature regarding homosexuality the area that has ‘developed’ is the one where scales have been created to measure ‘homophobia’. The 1980s saw social constructionism emerging as a new approach to homosexuality and sexuality in general in the social sciences and in women’s and gender studies. Rather than conceiving homosexuality as something which has an essential, unchanging quality, the social constructionist approach views homosexuality as a historical construction, subject to change in meaning, expression and experience as a result of changing historical conditions. The question that logically follows is: did psychology and specifically psychology in South Africa respond to this shift? Tiefer (1992), in commenting on the question within an international perspective, was of the opinion that psychology had not responded to the shift. Potgieter (1997b) in reviewing the literature suggests that there was a slight shift, but maybe not enough to shift the dominant discourses in psychology.

South African psychological research on homosexuality We now move to how South African psychology has researched marginalised forms of sexuality. The section provides insight into the research that was conducted and published by South African psychologists, which formed the basis of such legal conclusions presented in the insert below – conclusions that obviously had a far-reaching impact on the lived experiences of gay and lesbian people at the time. Until late 1996 not a single publication of the South African Journal of Psychology (SAJP), the official journal for psychologists, had ever published an article on female homosexuality and only a handful on male homosexuality (Potgieter 1997b). The first article published on

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Psychologists and the law The role which psychologists and psychiatrists played in justifying the legal construction of homosexuality in apartheid South Africa is clear if one takes a look at evidence provided by them to the courts and/or certain government commissions as well as the amount of value attached to that evidence. The following extract highlights the point: It must be noted that the evidence (regarding homosexuality) was submitted by the most eminent authorities in this field in South Africa including professors from well-known universities and the government departments (South Africa, Parliament: House of Assembly 1969, Debates, col. 4804). Various police officers also looked towards the psychological profession for assistance (see Memorandum of Psychologists). The South African study by Liddicoat (1956) was also consulted. The conclusion reached by legal and state authorities, based on the evidence of psychologists, was that homosexuality was usually the result of genetic abnormalities. However, it could not be excused (or accepted) and, with the necessary psychological intervention, spiritual guidance, and ban on the sale of certain sexual objects, the social ‘evil’ and embarrassment to white South Africa could be eradicated. They felt that even ‘the hard-baked homosexual would give anything to live a normal life; given that help was at hand’. Consequently and without doubt ‘the existing statutory sanctions should remain’ (South Africa, Parliament: House of Assembly 1969, Debates, col. 4804). The following is an impassioned plea that the South African Minister of Justice at the time , J Pelser, made during a parliamentary debate in 1967: … and who can deny that this was also the cancer that afflicted the Biblical Sodom? No, Sir, history has given us a clear warning and we should not allow ourselves to be deceived into thinking that we may casually dispose of this viper in our midst by regarding it as innocent fun. It is a proven fact that sooner or later homosexuality instincts make their effects felt on a community if they are permitted to run riot … Therefore we should be on the alert and do what there is to do lest we be saddled later with a problem which will be the utter ruin of our spiritual and moral fibre (South Africa, Parliament: House of Assembly 1967, Debates cols.1405–1406).

lesbians was in 1996 by Blyth and Straker on intimacy, fusion and frequency of sexual contact in lesbian couples. On the other hand, there had been some earlier articles engaging with the debates in psychology internationally on homosexuality. In 1984, Theron published an article on the differences of opinion about the American Psychiatric Association’s decision to delete homosexuality from its list of psychiatric disorders. While Theron seemed to support the notion that homosexuality is not abnormal, his view was not explicitly stated. Potgieter (1997b) comments that whether the paucity of articles on both female and male homosexuality can be attributed to a complete absence of manuscripts on the topic or the unwillingness of journals and other publications to publish such submissions is unclear. Most likely it is a combination of factors. Although articles were not published in the official psychology journal, dissertations in the area were completed at various universities. In the following sections we look at research in the area from the 1950s to the present. It is presented chronologically and focuses on how the research (similar to the international trend) presented the homosexual as sick and in need of help, and as transgressive. The section also draws attention to the fact that the research was silent on the experiences of black gays and lesbians, and tends to highlight in particular the research on lesbianism which has arguably been more marginalised than that of gay men.

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Early research in South African psychology In the early 1950s the first theses and dissertations about homosexuality were completed at mainly Afrikaans universities. In 1951, Loedolff’s study drew attention to the possible dangers of homosexuality and recommended treatment intervention that would lead to homosexuals being ‘cured’. He was of the view that homosexuals were attracted to children and therefore dangerous to society. In 1956 Liddicoat completed a dissertation which presented a more balanced view of homosexuality (Blyth 1989). However, both Loedolff (1951) and Liddicoat (1956) ignored the experiences of black people. Both these research reports were also used as evidence in the 1968 parliamentary Select Committee investigation into homosexuality. Botha (1975) argued for a compassionate and patient attitude towards homosexuals and for the treatment of homosexuality based on Christian beliefs. It almost goes without saying that his sample consisted of only white men. His arguments were wholly consistent with the established views of the state which deemed the homosexual as pathological, a threat to the South African Christian society, and the condition existing because of faulty personality factors. In the 1970s researchers such as Jacobs (1975), Kotze (1974) and Prinsloo (1973) all worked from an ideology of homosexuality as pathology or deviance. Their intention was to gain a deeper understanding of the ‘condition’ and eventually ‘cure’ the white gay South African male. He would then be able to play his part in building a nation that reflected the apartheid ideology of the day (Potgieter 1997b). In 1975 Woolfson conducted research on the aetiological and personality factors of homosexual behaviour in women. In most of this early research, whether condemning homosexuality outright or more gently accepting of it, the notions of deviance and pathology were inherent in the research. Furthermore, much of the research clearly assumed homosexuality as universal without any consideration of the differences across gender, race and other forms of social identity.

More recent research From the mid-1980s more liberal, gay affirmative research has been completed – predominantly at the historically white liberal universities. Some research focused on lesbians and their children and challenged court decisions that deemed lesbians unsuitable mothers (for example, Tucker 1986). Blyth (1989) explored the identities presented by gay women and Knight (1989) contributed to affirmative research with a focus on female couples. Although the latter research made a positive contribution to the discipline of psychology as well as to the building of a gay rights culture in South Africa, the experiences of black gay women were not part of these studies. In the early 1990s South African academic research shifted from trying to cure and understand the homosexual to exploring psychologists’ understanding of homosexuality (see Tarrant 1992). The late 1990s saw the first in-depth psychological study and up to this point only study of black lesbians in South Africa by Potgieter (1997b). Various publications emerged from the study (see Potgieter 1997a; 2004; 2003). Recent research in psychology has also focused on the experiences of homosexuals ‘coming out’ to parents (Mathews 2000), research relating to gay and lesbian mental health policy (Nel 2005) and research in the area of gay and lesbian studies (not necessarily in psychology) has focused on legal and constitutional rights (see De Vos 1999), including those relating to marriage

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rights for gay and lesbian, as well as the issue of violence experienced by lesbians (Isaack & Judge 2004). One is given insight into the lives of black South African lesbians in current day South Africa, despite constitutional changes and protection in Muholi’s (2004) article relating to rape of lesbians. The article documents instances of rape and other hate crimes against black lesbians in South African townships which transpire due to what Muholi labels ‘lesophobia’. Lesbians in South Africa also do not have a ‘champion’ as gay men have in the figures of Judge Edwin Cameron and Treatment Action Campaign head Zackie Achmat (Smith 2003). Although mainstream South African psychology did not engage critically with issues of homosexuality, critical texts emerged from activists and academics. An area where gays and lesbians are often not ‘out’ is in the work context. However, other than an honours dissertation by Hattingh (1994) entitled ‘The experiences of gays and lesbians who are covert at work’, very little if any research has been conducted in the area. The two groundbreaking texts in the early 1990s which addressed the paucity of gay and lesbian voices in printed texts as well as scholarly engagement in the area are: The Invisible Ghetto (Krouse & Berman 1993) and Defiant Desire: Gay and Lesbian Lives in South Africa (Gevisser & Cameron 1994). The experiences and activities of gay and lesbian activists during the final years of apartheid and the first few years of the ‘new’ South Africa have been recently published in Sex and Politics in South Africa (Hoad et al 2005). Another recent text engages with the construction/s of gay identities in post-apartheid South Africa with a specific focus on the lives of black men in rural South Africa (Reid 2005). Morgan and Wieringa (2005) have published Tommy Boys, Lesbian Men and Ancestral Wives: Female Same-sex Practices in Africa, a seminal text in the sense that it provides autobiographical accounts of same sex practices and understandings in eastern and southern African countries. An area that has been largely ignored except for a thesis by Kowen (2001), and a recent ‘teaching’ text by Bloch and Martin (2005) is the experiences of gay and lesbian youth. Other than the work by Kowen none of the recent work has been conducted under the auspices of the discipline of psychology. There has also been a far larger context of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender and intersexual (LGBTI) political and educational action through the emergence of a range of NGOs and popular, cultural events such as the Lesbian and Gay Film Festival of South Africa. An organisation which has for example lobbied successfully for the retention of the sexualorientation clause on the basis of non-discrimination is the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality which has subsequently changed its name to The Lesbian and Gay Equality Project. They have in recent years also legally challenged anti-gay sentiments and practices.2 It is probably fair to say that issues pertinent to gay, lesbian, and bisexual South Africans have in recent years received more attention from psychologists than in the past and related research has been conducted within what could be labelled a postmodern paradigm, thus shifting the landscape to one where notions of sexual and gendered identity are critically constructed (see Blumberg & Soal 1997; Potgieter 1997b). In the latter work the focus has been on subjectivities which are ‘non-heterosexual’, specifically discourses of bisexuality and lesbianism. The research highlights and in a sense ‘outs’ the resistances to heterosexist normative practices and draws attention to marginalised discourses on sexual subjectivities that are evident in South African society. Shefer (1999) remarks that these discourses of resistance are a ‘breath of fresh air’, especially given the dismal picture which has emerged in Aids-related research regarding

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the pervasiveness of male dominance, violence and women’s lack of power in negotiations of sexual relations. Nonetheless, as emerges in Blumberg and Soal’s (1997) work, even within such accounts the pervasiveness of the dominant discourse of binarisms is evident. For example, bisexuality is constructed as a normative third option in the binarism of hetero/ homosexual, so that the notion of multiple, more fluid sexualities/genders is undermined. Although perspectives from which the research has been conducted have shifted, the research and publications are being produced by a very small grouping in the discipline. At this stage many psychology departments have courses on gender and psychology, race and psychology and even sexuality and psychology, but no university department has a course that could be classified as gay and lesbian psychology. The official organisation for psychology in South Arica since 1994 the Psychological Society of South Africa (PSYSSA), has on numerous occasions held discussions on why there is a need for a gender division and papers have been presented on the topic at the annual conference (Potgieter & Zinn 2002), but 11 years after the launch of the ‘new’ society’ (PSYSSA), a gay and lesbian section has still not been hinted at. However, we believe that if the issue is raised it would be given serious attention by the organisation, which leads one to ask why this area of psychology continues to be marginalised. It would be interesting to see whether what we could term ‘gay and lesbian psychology’ or at least more of a focus on non-heterosexual alternatives in sexuality in psychology will emerge within the discipline in the coming decade, and if so, in what manner.

Heterosexuality under scrutiny Historically heterosexuality has been a silent partner to its binary opposite, homosexuality. Like ‘whiteness’ in respect of ‘blackness’, or ‘man’ in relation to ‘woman’, the normative identity is always assumed to be unproblematic. The institution of heterosexuality has been idealised, romanticised and naturalised, while homosexuality and other forms of sexual identity and practice remain in many cultures marginalised, pathologised and stigmatised, as has been illustrated in South African psychology itself. Thus, as many have pointed out, heterosexuality has been relatively untouched and untheorised across most disciplines (Kitzinger & Wilkinson 1993; Richardson 1996). Yet, over the last few decades, heterosexual sexuality (heterosex) has been increasingly problematised. Feminist work since the 1960s and the urgency of the HIV/Aids pandemic since the 1980s have seen an increasing global focus on exploring sexuality between men and women. It has been widely argued and empirically illustrated that heterosexuality (as both institution and ideology) is a central site for the production and reproduction of gender power inequalities, with women having little power to assert their needs or negotiate for their safety or pleasure (see for example, Holland et al 1990, 1991; Jeffreys 1990; Thandiwe was shortlisted as a candidate for the Master’s in Clinical Psychology programme. At the interview she felt that it was important to identify herself as a lesbian when asked if she had anything that she would like to share about herself. None of the heterosexual candidates, however, identified themselves in relation to their sexual orientation. It is interesting how such disclosures were never made by heterosexual candidates.

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T.Shefer

Kitzinger & Wilkinson 1993; MacKinnon 1989; Rich 1980; Richardson 1996; Vance 1984). Furthermore, it has now been well recognised that central to understanding the barriers to challenging HIV/Aids through safe-sex practices are the taken-for-granted sexual practices and sexual identities of the two genders. Psychology as a discipline has been fairly silent on the issue of heterosexuality, at least with respect to theorising power inequalities in heterosexual practices. While sexual development has been theorised in psychology, from psychodynamic theory to social constructionism, much of the work has focused on the development of ‘normal’ heterosex or on topics such as interpersonal sexual attraction (as in traditional social psychology). It has mostly assumed heterosexuality as a normative outcome of sexual development and psychology has been criticised for pathologising homosexuality as explored earlier (for example, Butler 1990a, 1990b). There is a growing body of critical feminist psychological work (for example, Wilkinson & Kitzinger 1993) that has begun exploring such dynamics. At both an international level and in the local context, the imperatives of HIV/Aids have meant a growing focus on ‘normal’ heterosexual relationships. Research on the power dynamics between men and women in the negotiation of heterosex within the context of HIV has begun to destabilise the picture of heterosex as an idealised, normative practice. Yet little of this picture has been represented in psychology textbooks. In South African psychology, we have started to realise the importance of unpacking the complexity of gender and sexuality in understanding the way in which people practice heterosex. In reviewing the current literature on heterosexuality, a number of key themes may be highlighted which are

Much of psychology has assumed heterosexuality as a normative outcome of sexual development.

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of relevance in deepening the current picture psychologists have of heterosexual gendered identities and practices.

The intersection of gender with other forms of power inequalities in sexuality At an international level, there is a large body of work in disadvantaged countries that views gender inequality and women’s sexual and economic subordination as central to HIV infection and women’s reproductive health generally (for example, Hamblin & Reid 1991; McFadden 1992; Schoepf 1988; Seidel 1993; WHO 1994). With the feminisation of poverty, particularly evident in Africa, women are made especially vulnerable to HIV infection through the intersection of economic and gender power inequalities. Such dynamics clearly play a significant role in the South African context too. The economic conditions, cultural prescriptions and gender power inequalities all intersect to create barriers for women in the negotiation of heterosex, and the imperative for women to be involved in sexual relationships for economic gain has been illustrated (see for example, NPPHCN 1995; Simbayi et al 1999; Strebel 1993). Furthermore, the colonial heritage of poverty, war and physical dislocation (such as migrant labour systems) have been found to further undermine women’s ability to protect themselves from HIV infection. In South Africa, as in the rest of Africa, the impact of the migrant labour system on the spread of HIV has been illustrated (see for example, Campbell et al 1998; Campbell 2001; Hunt 1989). The articulation of gender with age and class positions young, poor women as particularly vulnerable to HIV infection and sexual abuse. South African studies illustrate that young women frequently get involved with older men for access to money and/or status (NPPHCN 1995; Varga & Makubalo 1996). It is clear that women will allow unsafe sexual practices not only on the basis of survival but also for access to desired material goods and status. The concept of transactional sex has been coined in this respect (see for example, Leclerc-Madlala 2004). Similarly, there is some anecdotal evidence that men are seeking younger women to have sex with in order to avoid sexually transmitted illnesses, which may be contributing to coercive sexual practices (Simbayi et al 1999). Another current example of the overlap between age and gender in South Africa and elsewhere in the region, has been the rape of young girls and babies, which has been viewed in the media as resulting from the apparently widely accepted belief that sex with virgins is a way of curing or protecting against HIV/Aids (LoveLife 2000; Vetten & Bhana 2001). The complex intersection of issues of gender, age and access to material goods is becoming increasingly evident in the way in which heterosex is being enacted in many South African communities.

Male power and women’s lack of negotiation in sexual relationships In the search for understanding the vast barriers to ‘safe’ sexual practices, much research has highlighted the way in which gender power inequalities manifest in ‘normal’ heterosexual relationships. It has been fairly widely reported that even when women have knowledge about HIV/Aids or wish to protect themselves against pregnancy, they frequently are unable to successfully negotiate this (Shefer 1999; Strebel 1992, 1993; Varga & Makubalo 1996). As discussed above, women’s lack of negotiation has to be understood within the broader

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context of unequal gender relations and the way in which these intersect with other forms of power inequalities, such as class and ‘race’. On the other hand, traditional gender roles together with or outside of socio-economic factors clearly play a significant role in the barriers to safe sex practices. The central role that cultural practices of gender power inequality play in creating barriers to the negotiation of safe and equitable heterosex, has been increasingly theorised and researched in an international context. Similarly in South Africa, a number of key studies have highlighted the way in which gender power relations manifest in the negotiation of heterosex (see for example, Miles 1992; Shefer 1999; Strebel 1993). Studies show how women’s lack of negotiation is strongly associated with socialised sexual practices where it is expected of women to be passive, submissive partners, while men are expected to initiate, be active and lead women in the realm of sexuality (Shefer 1999; Varga & Makubalo 1996). Men are viewed as in control of relationships and sexuality. Much of this is related to the cultural constructions of male and female sexuality. A number of qualitative studies highlight a popular construction of male sexuality as overwhelmingly strong, urgent and uncontrollable (for example, Shefer & Foster 2001; Shefer & Ruiters 1998; Strebel 1993). This has elsewhere been named the ‘male sexual drive discourse’ (Hollway 1989) that seems to play an important role in women’s lack of negotiation in heterosex. Emerging out of the assumption that men are highly sexual is the construction of the domain of sexuality as masculine and a male preserve. Women are viewed as ‘asexual’, and therefore ‘strangers’ in sexuality, waiting on men to ‘show them the ropes’. They are expected to be centred around relationships and ‘love’, and sexuality is only legitimised for them if attached to these. A number of authors, internationally and locally, emphasise the lack of a positive discourse on female sexuality – in other words, women do not appear to be able to express or view their sexuality or their sexual desires and pleasures as positive (Holland et al 1991; Hollway 1995, 1996; Lesch 2000; Shefer & Foster 2001; Shefer & Strebel 2001). Thus there is an increasing call for the development of women’s voices in the realm of sexuality. It is asserted that if women cannot ‘say yes’ to sexuality, and ‘own’ their sexuality and sexual desires, then they certainly cannot assertively ‘say no’ and negotiate what they desire in their sexual relationships with men. Linked to the above is the reported pervasiveness of the traditional double standard where men are encouraged to actively pursue sexuality and take multiple partners (Wood & Foster 1995; NPPHCN 1995), while sexually active women are punished by being constructed as ‘loose’ and promiscuous. Even having knowledge about sexuality, and admitting to having had sexual experience appear to be taboo for women (Shefer 1999). A focus on condom use, in particular, has highlighted the problematic dynamics of heterosexual negotiation. In South Africa, studies show how condoms are not viewed positively by either men or women. Condoms are frequently seen as symbolising lack of trust or infidelity. It is viewed as ‘unmacho’ by men and unromantic by women and contrary to traditional female roles – ‘women who carry condoms are promiscuous’ (see for example, Abdool Karim et al 1992a, 1992b, 1992c; Lesch 2000; Strebel 1993; Varga & Makubalo 1996; Wood & Foster 1995). It is also more than evident from empirical findings that men’s sexuality is privileged in decisions regarding condoms, with women fearing the loss of their partners, anxious about their men not enjoying sex with a condom, and fearing that a request for condoms will be interpreted as a lack of trust in the men or as an admission of their own infidelity

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(Bremridge 2000; Campbell et al 1998; Shefer 1999; Strebel 1993; Wood & Foster 1995). While South Africa is seeing a definite increase in calls for women-centred methods of protection against HIV infection, such as female condoms and spermicides (see for example, Rees 1998), there is little research on the efficacy of such methods and much resistance to these methods (Richards 1996; Strebel & Lindegger 1998). Discourse on condom use also highlights the traditional prescriptions for female sexuality within the whore–madonna dichotomy. Qualitative research in South Africa, mirroring international literature (for example, Waldby et al 1993), shows how men distinguish between ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’ women (Bremridge 2000; Shefer 1999; Wood & Foster 1995), in which ‘unclean’ women (‘promiscuous’ women, prostitutes) constitute those who step outside prescribed feminine sexuality. Condom use is constructed by both men and women as inappropriate in long-term relationships where faithfulness is assumed. Clearly condoms are not neutral objects, but embody stigmas which may differ from context to context and in particular relationships, but nonetheless reflect the dominant discourse on gendered power relations and serve to inhibit negotiations around ‘safe sex’. Excerpts from focus groups with University of Western Cape Psychology students talking about heterosex It is no use us hiding away or … denying it …. Men have got a very powerful urge … sexual urge … more than women have … that is nature … (Female participant) I think that the men actually consider sex as a man’s thing and not a woman thing … Like if they get satisfied, then that’s fine … (Female participant) Nice girls don’t initiate … and are passive (Female participant) Male participant 1: What actually embarrasses men are … if a lady is too active sexually they tend to label that lady. They tend to say … Male participant 2: … that she’s a bitch. Male participant 3: Sometimes it’s just her fear of exposing her knowledge about sex, especially during that first time. If she did during the first time, she could give him the wrong impression about her … being a bitch. If you change boyfriends from this one this month and next month another one, then you’ll be labelled a bitch … But if you have a steady affair for a long time, then you will be respectable … (Female participant) Male particpant: [following discussion on the ‘double standards’] I would think that maybe its … its our culture [agreement from other men] Female participant: But you cannot blame the culture all the time! Male participant: What … who said that men should be approaching the women? Nobody knows. But it is a fact … it is what always happens … in fact everyone knows that a man should do the proposal … (Mixed group of participants) (from Shefer1999).

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While cultural constructions play a huge role in the reproduction of unequal sexual practices, some authors are critical of the way in which ‘culture’ may be used as a way of excusing problematic male behaviour and male power in sexual relationships (Shefer et al 1999; Shefer & Foster 2001; Shefer 2002). These authors point out how notions of ‘tradition’ and ‘culture’ are frequently used in many South African communities and elsewhere to rationalise and legitimise such practices as the ‘double standard’ and male promiscuity, as well as male lack of responsibility for contraceptives and safe sex practices.

Coercive and violent practices Given the high rate of violence against women in South Africa, much attention has been paid to this problem over the last decade. There has been a proliferation of research in South Africa on violence against women and coercive (hetero)sex. Sexual violence against women and girls, whether by known or unknown perpetrators, is widespread. Coercive sexual practices and abuse have been increasingly reported in studies exploring heterosexual negotiations and practices. In this respect, girls and women are clearly more vulnerable to HIV/Aids and other infections, as well as unwanted pregnancies. It has become apparent that for South African communities, violence and heterosex are inextricably interwoven (Shefer et al 2000). A recent spate of research among adolescents and children has revealed that their sexual experiences are bound up with violence and coercion (Buga et al 1996; NPPHCN 1995; Richter 1996; Varga & Makubalo 1996; Wood et al 1996; Wood & Jewkes 1998). Everyday coercive practices in heterosex are also found to be common, particularly in interactions between young women and older men in more powerful social positions. Thus it is not only overt sexual violence that is commonplace, but also more subtle forms of coercion and pressure. Discourses of love and romance play a significant role in sexual coercion. This appears to be particularly salient for girls/women who speak of ‘giving in’ to male pressure for sex because of ‘love’, commitment and fear of loss of the relationship (see for example, Shefer 1999; Varga & Makubalo 1996; Wood et al 1996). In the cited Violence in heterosexual relationships Research shows 28% of African, coloured and Indian urban youth (Richter 1996) and 71% of adolescent African women in peri-urban Cape Town (Maforah, in Wood et al 1996) report having sex against their will. Abrahams et al (1999) found that over 40% of a sample of 1 394 Cape Town men reported having physically or sexually abused their partners, while Jewkes et al (1999) found that 30% of a large sample (1 306) of women surveyed reported violence from male partners. A study in the rural Eastern Cape found that the most frequently cited reasons for women beginning sexual activity were coercion by a partner (28%), and ‘peer pressure’ (20%) (Buga et al 1996). A CIETafrica survey (2000) in Greater Johannesburg found that 27% of young women and 32% of young men did not see forced sex with someone they know as sexual violence (cited in Vetten & Bhana 2001). When asked to write down the first experience that comes to mind when thinking about heterosex, 22% of UWC psychology students wrote of their own or others’ experiences of violence and coercion, and a further 21% spoke of issues of male power and women’s lack of control (Shefer 1999) .

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Overt sexual violence and other subtle forms of coercion and pressure are commonplace in heterosexual relationships.

studies, it is evident that girls’ sexuality is constructed as responsive to and in service of male sexuality. Even when young women are aware of power inequalities and double standards within discourses of love and sexuality, there appears to be little space for resistance given peer pressure and male violence (Wood et al 1996). A number of South African studies also highlight the widespread nature of coercive sexuality or unprotected sexuality linked to economic factors such as poverty, financial dependence and job security (see for example, Jewkes & Abrahams 2000; Vetten & Dladla 2000). A growing body of research is beginning to establish a strong link between violence against women and HIV/Aids (see the review by Vetten & Bhana 2001). One of the significant areas hinges around condom usage in safe sex practices. Violence plays a role in negotiations around condoms, with women speaking of the fear and actual experience of angry or violent responses if they insist on condom use (Shefer et al 2000; Strebel 1992; 1993; Varga & Makubalo 1996). The link between violence and HIV/Aids also emerges around the disclosure of HIV status and attempts to practice safe sex by HIV-positive women. Although mostly anecdotal, there is evidence of male violence following women’s disclosure of their HIV status in South African communities (Mthembu 1998; Vetten & Bhana 2001).

Developmental contexts of heterosexual power relations This is still a fairly poorly subscribed area of research in South Africa (Shefer 1998), and ironically one where psychologists in particular should be playing a role in knowledge

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production. A number of contemporary studies illuminate the significance of early gender development to heterosexual behaviour. Social and sexual inequalities that are promulgated during childhood and adolescence are powerfully implicated in young people’s constructions of sexuality, love and relationships. With respect to girls, some of the salient issues revolve around puberty and the beginnings of menstruation and in this respect much of what we know empirically emerges from studies carried out in the light of HIV and reproductive health. One central thread is the lack of knowledge and access to reliable and constructive information that young people across the globe have during the process of their development. Young women in particular appear to lack basic knowledge about their bodies, reproductivity and sexuality (Bassett & Sherman 1994; Bhende 1995; Uwakwe et al 1994; Vasconcelos et al 1995). This lack of knowledge appears to be reinforced by global moralising and gendered discourses on female sexuality, where virginity and sexual naivety are prescribed for girls (Weiss et al 1996). Thus, even if women have sexual knowledge, they face social pressure to maintain an image of innocence, particularly with men, who may interpret knowledge as a sign of past sexual activity. Consequently, it is very difficult for adolescent and young women to protect themselves against sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and Aids, given that such measures will imply ‘the outward appearance of an active sexual life which is not congruent with traditional norms of conduct for adolescent girls’ (Weiss et al 1996: 9). In this way, dominant constructions of femininity act to decrease women’s power in the negotiation of heterosex. In the South African context, both historical and contemporary studies point to the protective construction of girls as sexually vulnerable to ‘dangerous’ male sexuality at the onset of menstruation (Lesch 2000; Mager 1996; Shefer 1998). Practices of forced and immediate placement of girls on contraception, and warnings against boys and men are apparently common in many South African communities. In this way, young girls are taught of their passivity and vulnerability to men/boys and their menstruation is constructed as a negative, dangerous transition (Shefer 1998, 1999). As a consequence, young women are often unprepared for sexual relationships, lacking not only useful knowledge but also a positive sexual identity (Thomson & Scott 1991). Boys, on the other hand, appear to be socialised positively into their ‘manhood’, with puberty signifying a transition to active (hetero)sexuality. Nonetheless, manhood appears to be rigidly associated with heterosexuality and the ability to be sexual with multiple women. Thus, those who do not conform or are not successful in this realm may be punished or stigmatised. Alternative sexualities, either homosexual or those resistant to traditional macho masculinity, are still not well tolerated in South African communities. For men and boys, the feminist argument of the close ties between heterosexual and masculine identity are borne out by empirical studies. For example, when asked what it means to be a boy, a 12-year-old boy replied. To have sex with a woman’ (NPPHCN 1995: 35). The answer from a 14-year-old girl is similarly stereotyped and makes no mention of sex: ‘To be a mother … to have a husband and to look after children’ (NPPHCN 1995: 36). While masculinity studies have been fairly marginalised locally, there is clearly a growing emphasis on understanding the role of masculinities (see for example, Morrell 2001), including a focus on the masculine in heterosexual relationships (see for example, Dunbar Moodie 2001; Shefer & Ruiters 1998; ). While critical men’s studies are clearly a growth area in South Africa, little of this work is happening in psychology as a discipline or practice.

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The impact of HIV/Aids on heterosex Few studies specifically focus on the impact of HIV/Aids on heterosex and it is evident that more work is needed in this regard. One would expect that the increased focus on heterosex and the attempt to popularise information on HIV/Aids and safe-sex practices would facilitate a move to more equitable sexual practices. Earlier studies have, however, found that in spite of increased knowledge and awareness, there has been little evidence of a change in gender power relationships in heterosexual practices (see for example, Perkel et al 1991). On the other hand, more recent calls for a focus on gender, together with life skills such as negotiation and assertiveness in educational interventions, may lead to more concrete changes in this area. More research is required, in particular evaluation studies on interventions that are currently in process. Some pointers to a negative impact of HIV/Aids on heterosex include the now widely publicised ‘virgin rape’ phenomenon mentioned earlier. The widespread belief that having sex with a virgin or a young woman may lead to a cure for HIV/Aids appears to have particular salience in southern Africa (LoveLife 2000). Although there is no proof that such a belief has led to an increase of child sexual abuse, a number of sensationalised media cases have certainly established such a link in the public eye. Furthermore, it stands to reason, as has been reported elsewhere, that the attempt to escape HIV/Aids may lead to an increase in sexual practices between older men and younger women/girls. Additional research is clearly needed in this area to establish a definitive relationship between HIV/Aids and child sexual abuse. Another area where HIV/Aids may be impacting negatively on heterosex centres around the stigmatisation of HIV/Aids and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) (for example, Ratele & Shefer 2002; Simbayi et al 1999). The continued silencing and stigmatisation of STIs in South African communities is believed to perpetuate unsafe sex practices, with men and women afraid to reveal their status and rather risking the infection of their partners. Some studies even report a vindictive promiscuity among those who are infected in order to ‘punish’ others (Simbayi et al 1999). Also, given reports of violent retribution from male partners when women reveal their HIV status, it is expected that women may resist disclosure and avoid insisting on safe sex out of fear of male violence.

Critical evaluation of contemporary South African work on sexualities The current proliferation of research and the educational emphasis on sexuality in South Africa, particularly the critical gaze on heterosexual relationships as well as shifting perspectives in gay, lesbian and other sexualities, are extremely important. With respect to heterosexuality it may even be argued that, disastrous as it is, the HIV/Aids pandemic has opened up a significant space for challenging gender inequality as it manifests in heterosexual relationships, as well as gender roles and inequality more broadly. On the other hand, there are also problems and potential concerns with the way in which heterosexual relationships and sexuality more broadly are currently viewed and researched in South Africa. In relation to women, it is arguable that while it is important to highlight women’s lack of negotiation in heterosex, the dominant picture emerging of women is that of inevitable victims of male power. Nobody would argue against the significance of acknowledging

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women’s lack of power in heterosex, but it is also of concern that that we do not inadvertently reproduce the dominant stereotype of women’s passivity. Contemporary feminist writers have begun challenging the way in which feminist theories on heterosexuality have historically constructed power as the inherent preserve of (all) men, and women as inevitably disempowered victims of male power (Hollway 1995; Jackson 1996; Smart 1996). Smart (1996), for example, speaks of a conflation of the penis with the phallus, in which she maintains all power is seen as male, and all males are seen as having access to power. She argues that both of these are problematic assumptions, given a postmodern understanding of the multiple, contextual and fluid nature of power. In this way, while most feminists distance themselves from biological determinism, she argues that power and gender are inadvertently essentialised, globalised and decontextualised. What is probably most problematic about the continued emphasis on women’s vulnerability, passivity and powerlessness, is that this emphasis serves to silence the many times that women do resist male power and do challenge men. Furthermore, the stereotyped image of women is ultimately reproduced, with no space given to alternative images and discourses of women as strong, assertive and powerful agents. Importantly, as mentioned, the predominant picture of women remains one of asexual victim of male desires, and women’s own sexual desires and a positive female sexuality is seldom represented in the literature. The converse of women being constructed as inevitable victims is the reproduction of the stereotype of men as inevitably powerful and controlling in relation to women in heterosexual relationships. While some authors have pointed out the salience of the ‘male sexual drive’ discourse in talk on heterosex, much of this work appears to reproduce this stereotype. Clearly there is a silence around alternative ways of being men. There is no literature which highlights men’s resistance to traditional masculinity, or speaks of men’s vulnerability to women and their difficulties with hegemonic masculinity. In some research, fragments of male vulnerability and the pressure on men to conform to hegemonic masculinity, are beginning to emerge (see for example, Pattman & Chege 2003; Shefer & Ruiters 1998), but far more work is required in this respect. Finally, it is significant to note that while heterosexuality continues to be the normative sexual practice, idealised and romanticised in the public eye, the literature on heterosexuality overwhelmingly presents a picture of an oppressive, inequitable and often violent institution. While the latter recognition has been an important step in the struggle towards gender equality, it is problematic that heterosexuality is presented as a homogenous, unitary and singular experience in the literature. The literature appears to assume only one way of being heterosexual and presents heterosexuality as an institution that inevitably reflects and reproduces power imbalance. Furthermore, most work seems to accept a construction of heterosex as centred on penetrative sexuality, again reproducing rather than challenging the social stereotypes of what heterosex is or can be. As with masculinities, alternative pictures and experiences of heterosexuality and heterosex are silenced and/or marginalised. It could be argued that if we are not presented with alternative images and discourses on heterosex, there is no way in which we can challenge the current oppressive context of heterosexual relationships. A further spin-off of the current focus on heterosexual practices in the light of HIV/ Aids is that the popular assumption that heterosexuality is the only form of sexuality is unintentionally reproduced. Most studies will not even identify their focus as heterosexual,

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but will speak of sexuality, inadvertently excluding any other forms of sexuality from the realm of the sexual. Historically, alternative sexual experiences and identities are marginalised and silenced in South Africa, both at a popular and academic level. In many ways, the current emphasis in research and intervention regarding sexuality reproduces this with its assumptions of a universal heterosexuality. Far more space needs to be given, both in research and knowledge production, as well as in popular realms, to the voices of those who practice alternative sexualities and relationships. Alternative models of sexuality, and especially those that resist dominant practices of inequitable sexual relations and traditional masculine and feminine sexualities, need to emerge to shift the thinking and practices in the current South African popular consciousness towards more material freedom and equality in sexualities. In South African psychology, as has been highlighted, research on homosexuality and other forms of sexuality may have shifted from more obviously homophobic and problematic work, but the area remains under-researched and marginalised. There is a paucity of critical work in psychology that begins to problematise sexualities and the very traditional binarism between heterosexuality and homosexuality itself (as is done in Smit’s chapter in this edition). Psychology in South Africa, like its international framework, remains in many ways an authority on sexualities, but has failed to engage with any of the critical political movements in re-thinking and re-constructing our assumed knowledges on genders, sexualities and sexual practices.

Endnotes 1. For a more detailed discussion on how South African law regarding sexual conduct was intrinsically linked to race, class and gender, and played a key role in the entrenchment of the apartheid ideology, see Potgieter (1997b). 2. See for example the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality v the Minister of Justice 1999 (1) SA6 (CC) at para 20–1, 25.

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UNHCR/N. Behring

Chapter 8

Early reproduction and gendered assumptions about adolescent (hetero)sexuality Catriona Macleod

Introduction The tragedy of teenage pregnancy is fast gaining catastrophic proportions … Teenage pregnancy … is the premier social evil of the Third World (Van Coeverden de Groot 1991: 379). We are looking at the situation [of black teenage pregnancy] from the wrong perspective – a perspective based on a Western (and in this country, an essentially white) middle-class morality which, at bottom, judges the births to be the result of lax sexual morals and which fails to see that other standards may be admissible in running one’s life (Preston-Whyte 1991: 37). The above quotes, published in the same year, are from the psycho-medical literature on teenage pregnancy in South Africa. They represent two opposing views on early reproduction. The first epitomises a ‘conservative’ stance, where teenage pregnancy is relegated to the status of evil or catastrophic, implying the need for control in order to avert imminent disaster. The second is more ‘progressive’ in nature and is an example of what is termed the revisionist literature on teenage pregnancy. It challenges the problematisation of teenage pregnancy by calling into question the underlying values that pathologise it, and suggests that other values that do not see teenage pregnancy as a problem are equally valid. In between these two perspectives lies a humanist approach in which concern is expressed by experts in the field with respect to the welfare of teenagers, with the concomitant need

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for research and services (as evidenced in the statement ‘The adverse health, social and economic implications of adolescent pregnancies can be averted by the effective utilisation of contraceptives’ (Ehlers 2003: 14)). The aim of this chapter is not to discuss which of these perspectives is correct, or to argue for or against the reading of teenage pregnancy as a social problem. Rather we wish to use this issue that has been so extensively investigated in psychology (both in the EuroAmerican context and in South Africa) as a point of departure for examining gendered assumptions concerning adolescence and adolescent (hetero)sexuality. These assumptions are not peculiar to the investigation of teenage pregnancy, and certainly appear in other domains of study concerning teenagers. However, teenage pregnancy represents a particularly pithy area for this kind of deconstructive work as the tagging together of the words ‘teenage’ and ‘pregnancy’ implies that young women are engaging in age-inappropriate activities (e.g. sex, mothering) while reducing their chances of age appropriate activities (e.g. continuing with education). Furthermore, early reproduction highlights issues around gender relations, although this is often not acknowledged in research, with the focus of investigation being chiefly on the young women. Two examples will suffice to illustrate the point. Consider the statement by the South African researcher that ‘these pregnancies were in fact less problematic because most of the births took place within the context of marriage’ (Fouché, translated from Afrikaans, 1992: 1). Reproduction, whether early or not, is legitimated when a woman has a legal marital contract with a man. Indeed this marriage–reproduction association is so strong that, as Macintyre (1991) found in United Kingdom, the factors used to explain unmarried motherhood (e.g. low self-esteem, childhood abuse, cognitive deficits, relationship difficulties) are often similar to those used to explain why married women might not have babies. In the teenage pregnancy literature, when a young woman is married, the concerns usually expressed with regard to the negative obstetric consequences of early reproduction and the young mother’s ability to care optimally for her child disappear. The second example concerns conception. In this respect the young woman is depicted in a variety of ways, including innocent, ignorant, passive, gaining materially from the interaction, needy, or trying to prove fertility. Seldom does the focus shift to the space between the young woman and man – i.e. to the gendered relation. An exception to this in South Africa has been the work of Wood, Maforah and Jewkes (1998). These researchers originally set out to study contraception (non)-use, circumstances of first sexual experience, reproductive knowledge, and perceptions and reasons for early pregnancy amongst isiXhosaspeaking adolescent women in Khayelitsha. However, the emergence of violence and coercion in sexual relationships as a key theme in their qualitative interviews forced them to shift their focus of attention to this issue. They found that through violence and coercion, coupled with the giving of clothes and money, males were able to define themselves as entitled to define the conditions and timing of love-making. Female submission to these sexual relations was reinforced by peers indicating that this was the appropriate response, and by the construction of these interactions as an indication of love. In the following, we: discuss the socio-historical emergence of teenage pregnancy and adolescence as areas of social and scientific interest;



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These scenes come from the comic book Heart to Heart, developed and produced by the Storyteller Group in conjunction with a group of high school students in a former homeland area. They illustrate how particular constructions of love can be used in coercive ways.

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❍ ❍ ❍

use teenage pregnancy to show how the understanding of adolescence as a time of transition has gendered implications; illustrate how discourses on adolescent (hetero)sexuality interlink with the dominant transition discourse of adolescence; and examine the gendered implications of how adolescent (hetero)sexuality is portrayed.

The history of teenage pregnancy Historical analyses indicate that teenage pregnancy is a topic of relatively recent interest. It emerged as a social problem in the United States in the 1970s (Vinovskis 1992) and somewhat later in South Africa (late 1970s/early 1980s). Presently, there is a substantial amount of work being undertaken in this area in South Africa. Various hypotheses have emerged to explain the sudden rise in interest and concern. The first is that the age of menarche has decreased owing to better nutrition, thereby putting adolescents more ‘at risk’ (compare South African researchers, Buga et al 1993, and American researchers, Harari & Vinovskis 1993). In other words, because more adolescents can conceive, more are, and therefore the increase in concern is related to an increase in the incidence of adolescent pregnancy. Vinovskis (1992) disputes this with regard to the United States, indicating that while the rates of early reproduction have been decreasing from a peak in 1957, the concern over teenage pregnancy has increased. There has been no systematic study on the historical pattern of teenage birth-rates in South Africa, and reported rates differ widely (Macleod 1997). However, the increase in voiced concern among researchers and practitioners reflects that of the United States. The other hypotheses concerning the increased interest in teenage pregnancy highlight a gendered component. First, it is argued that previously births to young women in the United States occurred chiefly within the context of marriage and that perceptions around early reproduction changed, not because the number of births were increasing, but because they were occurring more frequently among those who were younger, white and unmarried (Miller 1993). Secondly, Arney and Bergen (1984) present a related argument, but with an extra element concerning the control of young women and their reproduction. They illustrate how the morally loaded concepts of ‘unwed mother’ and ‘illegitimate child’ dissolved into a single new scientifically neutralised concept ‘teenage pregnancy’ in the United States in the early 1970s. This shift did not take place, they state, because our understanding of the problem was becoming more accurate, or because the problem demanded more humane treatment. Rather it allowed for young reproductive women to be seen as scientific, technical problems that could be investigated, measured and generally subjected to medical scrutiny. This meant that they could be controlled covertly, rather than through overt moral exclusion. In other words, rather than seeing young reproductive women as shameful or of low moral character, and isolating them in, for example, homes for unwed mothers, they were seen as having psychological or social problems. This meant that they should not be closeted away but should rather be assisted, through a range of medical, social welfare, educational and psychological procedures. These procedures would subtly encourage adolescent women to behave and to see themselves in particular ways. (Foucault 1977 refers to this as disciplinary technology.)

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In order to be able to talk of teenage pregnancy, an understanding of teen-age as a stage in human development is necessary. Generally, the term ‘adolescence’, as a phase of development, and ‘teenage’, as a particular period of chronological age, are seen as coterminous, although occasionally researchers include people in their early 20s in the category of adolescence. It is to the taken-for-granted assumptions concerning adolescence and adolescent (hetero)sexuality that we now turn.

Adolescence: a time of transition ‘Children having children’ (Boult 1992: 16) is one of the ways in which teenage pregnancy has been described in South Africa and elsewhere. This statement is possible because of the dominant social construction of adolescence in developmental psychology as a time of transition between child and adult, with vestiges of one (childhood) remaining while the other (adulthood) is being developed (Burman 1994). This construction of adolescence as a separable developmental stage of transition is, however, a relatively recent one. Compayré notes ‘a few lines by Aristotle [about adolescence], then nothing for 2 000 years until Mr Stanley Hall’s 1 300 pages’ (1906, cited in Koops & Zuckerman 2003: 346). In 1904, Hall published his treatise on adolescence in which he outlined his theory that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. He postulated that the transitional stage that humans went through to move from primitiveness to civilization plays itself out in a similar form in the developmental transition of humans from childhood to adulthood (Dubas et al 2003). With this theoretical influence, adolescence started to be seen in the Euro-American context at the beginning of the twentieth century as a time that required a moratorium on the assumption of adult responsibilities. This corresponded with the rise of mass schooling and the outlawing of child labour. It was in contradistinction to the encouragement of young people in the ninteeenth century to assume adult roles as soon as possible. Thus, many scholars mark this point as the historical period The occurrence of what is called ‘child-headed households’ in the wake of the HIV/Aids epidemic has had interesting repercussions in terms of understandings of adolescence. It is estimated that in 2004 three out of 100 South African households were child-headed. While previously it may have been unthinkable to have teenagers as the head of the household, there is growing understanding that the best solution for many child-headed households may be to recognise them as legal family forms. This legal recognition would protect the family’s property, the loss of which is cited by child-headed households as one of their chief concerns. However, this will not solve the financial difficulties of many households as child support grants can only be given to people over the age of 16 (Cullinan 2004). The implication is that adolescents are accorded the responsibility of care not only in terms of their siblings but also in terms of the maintenance of the home. While some adolescents may previously have been taking on these functions in the light of labour migration from rural areas, this is now occurring in unprecedented numbers. Contradictorily, teenagers younger than 16 are positioned as financially unable. This trend highlights how socio-historical circumstances provide the bedrock for cultural understandings of adolescence. With the advent of significant numbers of child-headed households, adolescence will take on a very different meaning to what it did previously, particularly in communities most affected by HIV/Aids.

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in which adolescence emerged as a separable stage of human development. Ariès, in his now classic text, concludes that we have ‘passed from a period that was ignorant of adolescence to a period in which adolescence is the favorite age’ (1962: 30). There has been no systematic study of the emergence of adolescence as a separable stage within South Africa. It can probably be safely assumed, however, that the history of colonialism and apartheid in South Africa means that there will be socio-historical differences and similarities (e.g. the introduction of mass schooling) between the emergence of adolescence in the US-American and European and South African contexts. Current dominant discourses in psychology, education, and health in South Africa concerning adolescence, however, reflect those mentioned above (i.e. adolescence as a stage of transition). This is not to say, of course, that the category of adolescence has been without its contradictions or that adolescence may not have very different meanings for various people in South Africa. During the apartheid era, for example, the official definition of the end of adolescence and the assumption of the responsibilities of adulthood varied according to the nature of the task (e.g. at the age of 18 ‘white’ males were conscripted into the army and trained how to kill, but could not sign contracts), and according to the racial classification of the person (e.g. with ‘white’ and ‘coloured’ children receiving welfare to the age of 18, and ‘black’ children to the age of 16). ‘Transition’ and adulthood The ‘transition’ discourse of adolescence implies that adolescence is a time of natural, inevitable, universal development in which the person moves from a less to a more complex organisation of physiological, cognitive, emotional and psychological attributes. Implicit in this is the end product – the normal adult. As Lesko points out, ‘narratives of … individual adolescent development prioritise the ending; they are primarily narratives of fulfilment’ (2001: 37). And this is where the gendered nature of this discourse is revealed because, as pointed out by Sampson (1990), when one examines the characteristics ascribed to this normal adult in most psychology literature, they are, to a large extent, coterminous with liberal notions of the white, middle-class male. Edwards and Duncan (1996) refer to this individual as the rational economic man, who is autonomous, self-contained, free, rational, assertive, self-fulfilling, individualistic and a breadwinner. In other words, the final aim of adolescent development is the achievement of these characteristics, with those not conforming to these ideals (such as young reproductive women) being cast as deviant. For example, when a teenager falls pregnant, concern is expressed about her educational status and her future economic status. Consider the following statements by South African researchers: ‘With little education and few skills, they are dependent financially on their oftenabsent menfolk’ (Nash 1990: 307) and ‘many adolescent mothers will need to discontinue their education, limiting their chances of finding jobs with salaries, which can sustain these mothers and their children. Financial hardships can aggravate the adolescent mothers’ social adjustment problems, increasing the likelihood of resorting to prostitution’ (Ehlers 2005: 14). Here the adolescent mother fails to fulfil the tenets of the rational economic man. She lacks ‘independence’ and has ‘few skills’, and thus is not self-fulfilled. She has ‘social adjustment’ problems. A number of assumptions are made here. Activities performed in the home (such as child-rearing, cooking, cleaning) are seen as unskilful, and contributing nothing to the economy of the household. Dependence and independence are portrayed in

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terms of monetary exchange (being dependent on a woman to cook supper or care for your children, for example, is not true dependence), with real skills being those associated with earning money in the public sphere, not those that are carried out in the domestic sphere. Earning money through the commercialisation of the body is illegal. One of the characteristics of rational economic man that is emphasised in psychology is rationality or cognitive ability. The ‘transition’ discourse of adolescence allows for young people to be positioned as lacking in the necessary rationality and knowledge of adulthood. In the teenage pregnancy literature ignorance concerning sexuality, contraception, conception and reproductive biology, irrational and risky behaviour, irrational decision-making, and engaging in personal fantasy (‘it will not happen to me’) are posited as major contributing factors to early reproduction (compare South African researchers, Boult & Cunningham 1993, and American researcher, Boxer 1992). The assumption here is that there is an ideal, mature way of thinking that is universal and timeless, with those thinking or knowing differently rendered as inferior or lacking. Feminists have, for some time now, problematised the portrayal of men as rational and women as emotional by critiquing the very notion of rationality as a masculine construction that has powerful effects. For example, Walkerdine, in talking of the possession of mathematical skill and knowledge (supposedly one of the highest forms of logical, rational reasoning) leaves a question mark: ‘But what if it is all a fantasy, a very powerful fantasy of control over time and space?’ (1989: 43). This question opens up the space for undermining the absolutism contained in a rationality that attempts to render the universe objectively knowable through the application of certain cognitive procedures. Although rational economic man features strongly as the ideal endpoint of adolescent development, there is also a gendered contradiction in that the attainment of female adulthood is equated with parenthood. Consider, for example, the following extract from South African research: Childbirth confers on girls the valued status of motherhood and it may be the pathway to adulthood in cases where marriage is delayed by lack of money, suitable accommodation or the necessity of amassing bridewealth. By having a child, a girl realises an important aspect of her femininity (Preston-Whyte & Zondi 1991: 139). Two interesting features emerge in this passage. The first is the slippage between adulthood and femininity, with the assumption that the type of adulthood achieved by women is different from that achieved by men. The second is the association of marriage or childbirth and female adulthood (it is implied that where gaining adulthood through marriage is delayed, the girl may attain this status through bearing a child). Thus, female adulthood is depicted as being achieved by women through a relationship with another – either through bearing a child, or through marrying a man. Neither of these feature in the masculinised notion of adulthood. Young women are therefore caught in a double bind. On the one hand, if they do not strive for the status of the rational economic man, they are portrayed as deviant. On the other hand, their achievement of adulthood is depicted as being fulfilled in relation to a rational economic man or a child. In terms of one of the tenets of female adulthood, mothering, the nascent developmental status of the adolescent allows for a mothering teenager to be positioned as inadequate in her interactions with her child. For example, it has been argued that teenage mothers provide fewer stimulating experiences, vocalise less often with their children, do not

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provide opportunities for affectional exchange, are less responsive and share emotions more inconsistently than do older mothers (Barratt 1991; Passino et al 1993). However, it has been argued that the samples (younger and older mothers) used in this research are, for the most part, non-comparable, especially in terms of socio-economic status, and that a confluence of factors other than maternal age (e.g. financial, social, emotional and social support resources) is implicated in these findings (Buccholz & Korn-Bursztyn 1993). These latter researchers concentrate on the strengths of teenage mothers, arguing that becoming a parent may foster reciprocal ego development between mother and child. Mothering has been taken up as a key issue in feminist debates. It has been pointed out that mothering is not a stable, inviolable self-evident activity, but is rather a practice that is informed by and reflects the socio-political pre-occupations of a particular time and place. Great variability exists across and within historical periods and societies in terms of child-rearing practices and the relationship between mother and child as well as between both of them and significant others (Glenn et al 1994; Jackson 1993). The difficulty in most of the psychology literature is that the mother-child dyad is foregrounded and isolated from its contextual background, thus obscuring the relationships (in particular the gendered relationships) that surround mothers and their children (Burman 1994). This separation of the mother-infant from the relational and social context allows for the marginal mothers such as teenage mothers to be blamed for the difficulties their children experience. These mothers are then portrayed as being accountable for social problems (as is clearly seen in the teenage pregnancy literature). The following appears on a Family and Marriage South Africa (FAMSA) web-site, entitled ‘Somewhere in the middle’ (www.famsa.org.za/teens.html). It illustrates the ‘transition’ discourse that dominates understandings of adolescence. Teenagers are somewhere between the age of thirteen and nineteen. This period of one’s life can be really exciting, challenging, full of discoveries about oneself and the world. It is also a time filled with changes that can be quite difficult. Teenagers are somewhere in the middle: they are no longer children, and yet they have not quite reached adulthood. This period of one’s life can be compared to walking over a bridge, where one [has] left the world of childhood and is crossing over into the world of adulthood. The text continues by talking about physical, emotional and social changes that may occur in adolescence. It concludes: At Family Life Centre the counsellors are aware that the ‘somewhere in the middle’ stage of life can be pretty difficult at times. If you are a teenager and feel that you need to speak to someone, confidential counselling is available. This is what post-structural theorists would refer to as the psychologisation of adolescence.

Transition, turmoil and passivity One of the major understandings of adolescence in psychology is that experimentation and turmoil form a normal part of the transitional process. This view was first introduced by Stanley Hall, who described adolescence as a phase of ‘storm and stress’, a conflictive period in which the person vacillates between inertia and activity, narcissism and self-doubt

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(Dubas et al 2003). Although researchers have challenged this type of transition as inevitable, pointing out that there may be a number of developmental pathways for adolescents, the ‘turmoil’ discourse remains dominant both in popular understandings of adolescents and in the psychology literature. Fine and MacPherson (1994), however, in their work on adolescents’ and women’s bodies, stress the incompatibility of the image of the experimenting adolescent and that of femininity. The restless, searching experimenter, they argue, is a masculinised construct (much the same as the rational economic man discussed above). Attempts by girls to satisfy the tenets of this construct involve their ‘displaying notably a lack of maturing but also a lack of femininity’ (Fine & MacPherson 1994: 220). In work on the South African teenage pregnancy literature (Macleod 2001, 2002, 2003; Macleod & Durrheim 2002, 2003), it was found that the issue of turmoil and the imperative to experiment is presented in contradictory ways. On the one hand, it is depicted as a universal pressure that all adolescents experience. On the other hand, the female adolescent is predominantly portrayed as a ‘passive recipient of external influences’. They are seen as being prone to negative peer and societal influences, and unable to resist male sexual advances (‘Some teenagers fall pregnant because they are not assertive’ (Richter & Mlambo 2003: 62)). Thus ‘normal’ adolescence has been and continues to be, in many respects, a masculinised concept Transition and education One of the hypotheses about the emergence of adolescence as a separable stage of development is that extended education meant that young people were dependent on their parents for longer (Koops & Zuckerman 2003). Although the notion of life-long learning has seen more adults engaging in educational activities, the primary function of adolescence continues to be portrayed as preparation for adulthood through education, with the primary function of adulthood being production and reproduction. In the teenage pregnancy literature, for example, the potential disruption of schooling accompanying pregnancy is seen as problematic as this limits the adolescent’s future career options and contributes to a lower socio-economic status for her and her child (cf. South African researchers, Boult & Cunningham 1993). In the United States there is some debate, however, concerning exactly how disruptive early reproduction is on schooling and to what extent this contributes to socio-economic disadvantage (Brindis 1993). On a different tack, feminists have taken up this issue of the neutrality of education in gendered terms. For example, Macintyre and Cunningham-Burley (1993) argue that the oneto-one correspondence made between education and future advantage hides a multitude of socially constructed racial, class and gender inequalities. They state that the belief that women should forego having children in their teens so that they can succeed in educational and occupational markets rings hollow in many societies. Opportunities for emotionally and financially rewarding jobs for women living in disadvantaged circumstances are severely restricted. Even in privileged (mostly white) middle-class environments, occupational choice and promotion remains more restricted for women than men. Indeed, ‘revisionist’ writers (e.g. the American researcher, Geronimus 1991; Preston-Whyte & Zondi 1989) in teenage pregnancy literature talk of early reproduction as an ‘alternative life course’ for women in disadvantaged circumstances, particularly those marked by compromised health and shortened life

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expectancy. Child-bearing, they state, has direct and opportunity costs for these women at any age, but early reproduction may be more functional for them in a variety of ways – for example, they gain more access to familial child-care support.

Adolescent (hetero)sexuality Sexuality, an area infused with gendered power relations, is an area that has attracted much feminist interest and many debates. These debates are complex, with feminists, apart from critiquing standard views of sexuality, disagreeing amongst themselves, depending on the theoretical position they take. I do not attempt an overview of this literature here, but shall rather concentrate on the discourses concerning adolescent (hetero)sexuality emerging in my reading of the South African teenage pregnancy literature, as well as issues around sexuality education. But first a word of explanation. Readers may find the use of the (hetero) in (hetero)sexuality confusing. Our aim in using this type of presentation of the word is to highlight the fact that when sexuality is debated in the psychology literature, it is assumed to be heterosexuality, with other forms of sexual activity and sexuality being ignored or sidelined (this point is made very pertinently by Kitzinger & Wilkinson 1993, and is argued in the last chapter by Shefer & Potgieter). The ‘transitional’ discourse of adolescence (which allows for the simultaneous inclusion and exclusion of childhood and adulthood characteristics in adolescence) means that (hetero)sexuality in adolescence is, on the one hand, recognised in teenagers and, on the other hand, problematised. Sexual activity is seen as an adult function. Therefore, sexuality is emerging (thus recognised) but also problematic as the adolescent is really still a child. In this simultaneous recognition and problematisation, (hetero)sexuality is treated in multiple, sometimes contradictory ways. An analysis of the South African literature on teenage pregnancy revealed the deployment of three discourses concerning adolescent (hetero)sexuality, namely ‘humanist’, ‘moral decay’, and ‘biological’. Each of these contain dangers for the adolescent female, however, as elucidated below. The ‘humanist’ discourse of (hetero)sexuality sees (hetero)sexuality as part of the self-development and self-actualisation of the free person. It promises integration and a unitary sexual being, which allows for calls for a holistic, multi-disciplinary approach to sex education. (Hetero)sexuality itself is treated as an essentialised and historically constant phenomenon that has been freed from the shackles of the past. For example, the South African researchers Oosthuizen, Matthews, and Richter and Mlambo state, respectively, that ‘the teenager herself becomes sexually self-actualized as a woman by exploring … and emancipating herself in the realm of her own sexuality’ (Oosthuizen 1990: 45); that there should be a holistic perspective on sex education ‘thereby putting sex education in a natural context’ (Matthews 1995: unpaginated); and that ‘sex education has to be integral to a young person’s personal development’ (Richter & Mlambo 2005: 68). Foucault (1978) critiques this notion of (hetero)sexuality as an underlying, transhistorical, cross-cultural essence. Sexuality, as discourse and practice, he argues, emerged with a separation of sex from alliance. Sex became an activity, with sexuality being viewed as an individual matter. He delineates some of the strategies deployed in power relations around sexuality. These include what he has called the pedagogisation of children’s sex – teachers,

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families and medical practitioners were employed in the fight against children’s sexuality, which was defined as simultaneously natural and unnatural. Together with this we have the hystericisation of women’s bodies – the body of the woman was analysed as being saturated with sexuality. This was made possible through the advance of medical science. The humanist premises mentioned above together with the processes outlined by Foucault (1978) provide ripe ground for the above-mentioned simultaneous recognition and problematisation of female adolesecent (hetero)sexuality. In moving towards adulthood, the need for sexual self-actualisation by the adolescent is emphasised. She is ‘saturated’ with sexuality and therefore must find expression for this. Simultaneously, however, sex is unnatural as she is still a child. She is ignorant of the facts of sex, and therefore innocent. The concurrency of these depictions is contained in the following extract by South African researchers Boult and Cunningham: The fact that 139 young teenagers were engaging in sexual activity without understanding the relationship between procreation, contraception and sexual intercourse should give parents, guardians, and school authorities pause for thought (1993: 110). Here the teenagers are saturated with sex, but also ignorant and innocent. Note that those for whom this should be of great concern are the assumed rational, knowledgeable adults. In the ‘moral decay’ discourse, on the other hand, sexual activity amongst teenagers is viewed as a relaxation of moral standards, and calls are made for interventions to promote abstinence via the church (e.g. through biblical teachings) or various cultural structures (e.g. through virginity testing). This discourse acts in opposition to the ‘humanist’ discourse. In the place of notions of freedom and individual choice and self-actualisation, the ‘moral decay’ discourse argues that too much freedom is given to teenagers at an early age and that sex should be confined to marriage. The ‘moral decay’ discourse resonates with what Fine (1988), in her work on the sexuality education curricula in the United States, identified as the ‘sexuality as individual morality’ discourse. In this discourse, women’s decision making is valued as long as the decision is made for premarital abstinence. The language of self-control and self-respect, aimed chiefly at young women, is utilised, together with reminders that (hetero)sexual immorality brings not only personal problems but also social ones. The ‘biological’ discourse situates (hetero)sexuality within the mechanisms of biology, with adolescents’ bodies (degree of maturation, nutrition, ‘natural’ sex drives) coming under scrutiny. Biological functions are assumed to act independently of the cultural or social (or, at the very most, an oblique relationship is conceded). This discourse contains within it a hydraulic hypothesis. This posits that, as a result of biological mechanisms, sexual impulses and drives are created which need, on the one hand, to be accepted and, on the other, to be curbed in adolescents. This dovetails with the depiction of adolescence as a transitional stage of experimentation, with sexual energy or pressure leading to sexual exploration and experimentation. However, males and females are not positioned equally within this hydraulic hypothesis of (hetero)sexuality. Males are seen as having greater sexual drives with females generally being the recipients of males’ overtures. Hollway (1989) refers to this as the ‘male sex drive’ discourse. In this discourse women occupy the position of object. This position of object contains a double bind for women, in that they are incited to make themselves attractive to men, while at the same time being responsible for curbing

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the male’s sex drive. The biologism inherent in the ‘male sex drive’ discourse naturalises coercive sexual encounters (men are at the mercy of their biological nature), rendering men innocent and women culpable in these interactions. While men face gendered pressure to fulfil the tenets of the ‘male sex drive’ discourse, females are positioned biologically in a different way. Consider the following extract from the South African teenage pregnancy literature: A wife who fails to have a child fairly speedily after marriage is as open to questioning and eventually ridicule as the young girl who is known to be having sexual relations regularly but who does not become pregnant (Preston-Whyte & Zondi 1989: 65). Fecundity, thus, becomes a female biological imperative, with fertility being portrayed as a strong feature of feminised sexual identity. Turning to sexuality education programmes, these are constantly mooted in the teenage literature as the avenue through which early reproduction can be prevented and healthy sexual practices promoted. Evaluations of the efficacy of sexuality education programmes have yielded mixed results. Sometimes there appear to be gains in knowledge, but this does not necessarily translate into changes in sexually-related attitudes and behaviour. Feminists have taken up the issue of the ideological implications of sexuality education. Young women are far more likely to be the recipients of sexuality education, whether from home, school, religious institutions or youth clinics. Implicit in this is the message that young women are responsible for controlling sexual activity between themselves and their partners. Young men, on the other hand, often receive their sex education from the street, picking up sexist attitudes of male dominance and the exploitation of females (Chilman 1985). This trend has been recognised in South Africa. Burns (2002), in her summation of key points raised in a colloquium entitled ‘Instituting Gender Equality in Schools: Working in an HIV/Aids Environment’, notes that ‘women and girls can no longer be the only target of sexuality education – for both moral and political as well as pragmatic reasons. Boys and men must be included too’ (9). In a seminal paper entitled ‘Sexuality, schooling and adolescent females: the missing discourse of desire’, Fine (1988) analyses sexuality education curricula in the United States. She outlines the anti-sex rhetoric surrounding sex education and its intersection with the development of sexual responsibility and subjectivity in adolescents. Her concern is that in sex education we find the authorised suppression of a discourse of female sexual desire; (2) promotion of a discourse of female sexual victimization; and (3) the explicit privileging of married heterosexuality over other practices of sexuality, (Fine 1988 :30). Fine (1988) found that when female desire was spoken of, it was always in the context of reminders of the consequences of this desire, be they emotional, physical, moral, reproductive or financial. Similarly, in my analysis of the scientific literature on teenage pregnancy in South Africa, I could find only isolated examples of a discourse of female desire. These were diluted by their insertion within a number of caveats – desire being linked to a need to prove fertility, or pleasure being depicted as carrying inherent dangers. The promotion of a discourse of female sexual victimisation resonates with our analysis of the female teenager as passive and at the mercy of the male sex drive. And, finally, the privileging of married heterosexuality is evidenced in the introduction of this chapter in which teenage pregnancy in the context of marriage is rendered acceptable.

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The following is from a Department of Health booklet titled Teenagers and Aids. The booklet aims to provide information and guidance concerning sex and HIV/Aids to adolescents. This may mean that you are between 13 and 19 years of age, have started your monthly periods (menstruation) or have ‘wet dreams’. Congratulations! These physical, emotional and social changes affecting your life mean you are on your way to becoming an independent young adult with an exciting life ahead of you!’ ‘Do you often find that: ❍ your feelings change all the time – up one minute, down the next; ❍ you worry about appearance, being too fat or too short; ❍ your parents and teachers do not understand you; or ❍ you cannot stop thinking of a member of the opposite sex?

A number of assumptions are made here. The first is that adolescence is a time of turmoil (ups and downs, worries). We have seen in this chapter that researchers have challenged this type of representation and that there is a gendered component to it. The second is that there is a generation gap between teenagers and adults. This reading is only possible if teenagers are viewed as ‘not adult’. Again researchers have challenged the generation gap hypothesis (Koops & Zuckerman 2003). The third is that adolescents are all heterosexual and therefore have fantasies about the opposite sex. The fourth is that the transition from childhood to adulthood takes place in the teenage years (13 to 19). The fifth assumption is that the end point of adolescence is the normal ‘independent’ adult. As we have seen in this chapter, this endpoint is gendered in terms of the assumed characteristics of the normal adult. Finally, although it is not explicitly stated, there appears to be an attempt to include both males and females with monthly periods applying to females and ‘wet dreams’ applying to males. Thus females experience a (painful) biological process, while males experience involuntary pleasure. This links up with Fine’s (1988) work on the missing discourse of desire for females.

Conclusion Some readers may assume that we are saying that early reproduction is unproblematic. This is not so. We acknowledge that some young women and their families may experience economic hardships, relationship difficulties, personal problems, and so forth. But then, so too may women and their families at any stage of life. It may well be that difficulties experienced by mothers have less to do with age per se, but rather to do with a host of other factors, such as familial support and socio-economic status (as has been suggested by Ncayiyana and Ter Haar (1989) concerning obstetric difficulties, and Buccholz and Korn-Bursztyn (1993) with respect to mothering). A similar argument has been made by Kett (2003) concerning research on adolescents in general. He believes that, by concentrating specifically on adolescents, researchers tend to ignore the parallels in the experiences and changes in life that occur across age groups within a particular sub-population. In this chapter we have tried to deconstruct this emphasis of the teenager implicit in the notion of ‘teenage pregnancy’, and expose some of its gendered effects.

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Lawson notes that when a teenage woman becomes pregnant, she ‘pollutes the category of child and becomes a deviant adult’ (1993: 105). In other words, she subverts the assumed transitional nature of adolescence, engaging in adult practices (sexual activity, reproduction) at a time of life when the dominant social reading is that she is ‘not-yet-adult’. As we have seen in this chapter adolescence as a time of transition is not a pre-given reality, but rather a socio-historical construct. Its dominance in psychological understanding, however, has a number of powerful age-based and gendered effects. First, the implied endpoint of the transition is the masculinised, rational, self-actualised adult, with women gaining adulthood through relationship with another. Second, there are differential portrayals of males and females in terms of turmoil and passivity, with the masculine most comfortably occupying the position of the active experimenter and the feminine being passive. Third, adolescence is equated with obtaining a (gendered) education. Fourth, young mothers are excluded from the adult function of adequate mothering. Fifth, female adolescent (hetero)sexuality is simultaneously recognised and problematised. In terms of (hetero)sexuality, the ‘humanist’ discourse positions young women as simultaneously saturated and innocent of sex. In the ‘moral decay’ discourse their decision to have sex is legitimated if that decision means delaying sexual activity until after marriage. The ‘biological’ discourse renders women responsible for curbing the natural sexual desires of men, while at the same time proving fertility. Missing from talk about female adolescent (hetero)sexuality is reference to sexual desire.

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K. Jungar

Chapter 9

A gendered analysis of woman abuse Floretta Boonzaier

Introduction Violence against women (or gender-based violence) is a global problem that takes many forms and affects all societies. In recent times it has also been recognised as a fundamental human rights issue in South Africa as well as globally. Gender-based violence includes sexual harassment, dowry-related violence, female genital mutilation, forced prostitution, rape and woman abuse. The focus of this chapter is on violence directed at women in the context of intimate relationships, defined as ‘woman abuse’. Woman abuse includes emotional, verbal, physical, sexual and economic forms of abuse. The term is employed to acknowledge the gender specific nature of the violence (directed at a woman and perpetrated by her male partner) (Bograd 1990). Across a variety of geographical contexts, woman abuse poses a significant problem to women’s health and their human rights. Eisikovits, Winstok and Fishman (2004) reported on a recent Israeli national survey and found that 13% of 2 677 women had experienced some form of physical violence and 6% reported a past year prevalence of physical abuse. A Spanish study revealed that 43% of women reported psychological abuse, 8% reported physical abuse and 11% reported sexual abuse (Medina-Ariza & Barberet 2003). In a largescale Finnish survey, 22% of married or cohabiting women reported threats and physical or sexual violence from a current partner (Heiskanen & Piispa 1998). The most recent World Health Organisation (WHO) report showed that in studies from a range of African contexts, such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Zimbabwe, between 13% and 45% of women had been physically abused by an intimate partner (Heise & Garcia-Moreno 2002). In South Africa violence against women poses an important challenge to gender equity. The 1998 South African Demographic and Health Survey revealed that 10% of 11 735 women

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had been assaulted in the previous year – 6% by a current or ex-partner (Department of Health and the Medical Research Council 1998). Jewkes, Levin and Penn-Kekana (2002) found that 25% of women in three provinces reported a lifetime prevalence of abuse. Dawes, De Sas, Kropiwnicki, Kafaar and Richter (2004), in a national survey, showed that nearly 20% of participants (both men and women) had experienced physical violence in their domestic relationships. Women reported a lifetime victimisation rate of almost 10%. Woman abuse is also common in samples of pregnant women. Mbokota and Moodley (2003) for example found that of 570 women who attended a public hospital in Durban, 38% had been abused at some time in their lives and that 35% of the women had been abused during the current pregnancy. Similarly, Dunkle et al (2004) found that of 1 395 women who attended antenatal clinics in Soweto, 56% experienced a lifetime prevalence of physical and/or sexual assault by an intimate partner.

Understanding woman abuse The field of woman abuse is theoretically diverse. A range of factors have been offered for why men perpetrate violence against their intimate partners and why women are the victims of such violence. Individual-psychological explanations From a psychological perspective, a man’s violence toward his partner has been understood in terms of individual psychopathology or personality characteristics. Violent men have been compared to those who are non-violent in terms of differences in self-esteem, assertiveness, social skills, alcohol and drug abuse and impulse control (Holtzworth-Munroe et al 1997). Violent men have, for example, been reported to be more hostile, angry and aggressive than their non-violent counterparts (Kane & Staiger 2000). Other factors that have been associated with violent men include excessive jealousy and low levels of assertiveness and self-esteem (Hotaling & Sugarman 1986). Furthermore, abusive men have also been found to possess characteristics associated with borderline and antisocial personality disorders (Holtzworth-Munroe 2000). Adams (1990) cautions that certain psychological factors such as a lack of impulse control, anger or insecurity may be present when some men commit violence against their partners but these cannot be adequately used as an explanation for violence. Some men who are insecure, angry and lack impulse control do not beat their partners. The literature on abused women follows a similar trajectory in terms of its focus on the psychological disposition of abused women. Whereas the psychological profiles of violent men have been viewed as ‘causes’ of their behaviour, women’s psychological characteristics have been understood as precipitators to the abuse (Holtzworth-Munroe et al 1997). Early psychological accounts seemed to suggest that women were responsible for their own victimisation (Snell et al 1964) and the literature shows that abused women have been labelled with a variety of ‘disorders’ such as battered women’s syndrome, self-defeating personality disorder and co-dependency (Westlund 1999). The social, political and broader implications of these diagnostic labels have often been overlooked and, as Rosewater (1990) argued, women have all too often been re-victimised by the diagnostic process. Researchers have examined the differences

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between abused women and control groups and found that abused women had elevated rates of depression, panic disorder and generalised anxiety disorder (Cascardi et al 1995) and greater elevations on scales measuring self-defeating attitudes, dependency, paranoia, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Coolidge & Anderson 2002). In the literature, the most common diagnoses associated with abused women are depression and PTSD. High rates of depression and PTSD have been found in samples of abused women and are more than likely a consequence, rather than a ‘cause’ of men’s violence. However, in one study Caetano and Cunradi (2003) found that Hispanic and black women in the United States evidenced higher rates of depression (independent of reports of violence) than white women, suggesting that the psychological symptom cannot be studied without placing it in its broader socio-cultural and structural context, a context in which minority groups are disenfranchised and marginalised. Although there are a number of psychological factors that may contribute to men’s violence against women (e.g. anger, impulsivity, personality disorders) and there are a number of psychological consequences that may arise from men’s violence (e.g. depression, PTSD), a focus on individual-psychological characteristics tends to overlook the broader context in which a man perpetrates violence toward his intimate woman partner. As a result, researchers have also examined the interpersonal dynamics that characterise abusive relationships. Interpersonal explanations At the interpersonal level, researchers have explored how the specifics of the couple’s relationship and their interactions might increase the risks of violence. Research shows that relationship status (divorced, separated or single) may be associated with increased risk of victimisation for women (Vest et al 2002) and that women who attempt to separate from abusive partners may be at risk for increased violence (Fleury et al 2000). Marital conflict and power have also been associated with men’s violence toward women partners. Hindin and Adair (2002) in a study based in the Philippines found that household decision-making autonomy was related to domestic violence. Male control over decision-making in a relationship was likely to result in domination and violence toward women. However, when women were responsible for decision-making and were autonomous, they were also more likely to experience violence from their partners. Olson (2002) showed that in relationships of equal or balanced power, aggression and violence were more likely to be reciprocated whereas in relationships of unequal power, aggression was not reciprocated (dominance–submission). Unequal power is a relationship issue as it is mediated and negotiated between the individuals in the dyad. However, in the broader context, relationship power is also a social/structural issue in that, in heterosexual relationships, it is often the man who wields power in the relationship. As a result, interpersonal heterosexual relationships should be understood as embedded within broader contexts influenced by ideologies such as patriarchy. Socio-cultural explanations The recent WHO global report on violence showed that, across a broad range of contexts, women living in poverty are disproportionately affected by intimate partner violence (Heise & Garcia-Moreno 2002). Hindin and Adair (2002) found that household wealth was

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associated with a decreased likelihood of domestic violence in the Philippines. In northern India, Martin, Tsui and Maitra (1999) found that abusive men were more likely to live in poverty, have low levels of education, more than one child and started cohabiting at a younger age. Dawes et al (2004) found that more South African men in the lower income group perpetrated violence against their partners and more women in the same group experienced violence. A greater incidence of domestic violence amongst the poorer sectors of society may reflect differential reporting, in that higher income groups are more likely to protect their privacy and less likely to come into contact with social service agencies (Gonzales de Olarte & Gavilano Llosa 1999). Although this might be so, the consistent link across a variety of contexts has important implications for understanding woman abuse. Contrasting the standard assumptions about the relationship between male unemployment and woman abuse (a positive relationship), Cunradi et al (2000) showed that unemployment of the male partner in black couples decreased the risk of violence. In Lima, Gonzales de Olarte and Gavilano Llosa (1999) also found that employed men were more likely to be physically and psychologically violent than unemployed men. They suggested that unemployed men may be more dependent upon their partners’ earnings and therefore less likely to use violence. Similarly, Jewkes et al (2002) found that, in severely deprived South African households, where the main source of financial support was received from a third party, poverty served a protective function. In these couples, conflict over resources was reduced thus reducing the potential for violence. The research findings on poverty show that the relationship between financial resources and men’s violence against their partners is not a straightforward one. Poverty is likely to interact with a range of factors increasing men’s tendency toward violence. These include the frustrations and stressors associated with living in poverty such as a lack of resources, poor living conditions, a lack of services and opportunities and a range of other social, economic and political factors (Gonzales de Olarte & Gavilano Llosa 1999), including failed gender (masculine) norms. National family violence surveys conducted in the United States found racial differences in intimate partner violence. In the first such survey Straus, Gelles and Steinmetz (1980) reported that the rates of violence against women were higher in blacks than whites. Decades later, Cunradi and colleagues (Cunradi et al 2000, 2002) found that amongst two minority groups in the United States (blacks and Hispanics), the rates of violence were higher than for white couples. They explored how these rates were influenced by factors such as neighbourhood poverty, socio-economic status and individual variables such as alcohol problems. In South Africa the research also alludes to a link between race and woman abuse. Recent research conducted by the Medical Research Council on intimate partner homicide, indicates that coloured women are most at risk of woman abuse (Mathews et al 2004). Similarly, Dawes et al (2004) found that proportionally higher numbers of African and coloured women reported violence from their partners. However, as Dawes and his colleagues suggest, the relationship between race and domestic violence may be confounded by poverty as those groups are also most likely to be in the lower income bracket. As a result of their marginalised status, certain groups may experience more violence resulting from a lack of opportunities, the multiplicity of stressors, institutionalised racism and structural inequalities between groups.

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By acknowledging a variety of factors, a socio-cultural analysis shifts the emphasis away from an exclusive focus on the psychology of the violent or violated individuals to the broader context in which violence occurs. The danger of placing too much emphasis on sociodemographic risk markers is that the ‘violent family or cultural type’ may become reified and violence may seem to be characteristic of particular strata of society. In terms of a sociological analysis, both men’s and women are viewed as having the potential for violence (Bograd 1990) because gender is viewed as one variable among many. However, the varying contexts and consequences in which men and women’s violence occur are often overlooked. The assumption of sexual symmetry in domestic violence has been vehemently criticised by feminist researchers (Dobash et al 1992) who argued that the measures used to assess violence only focused on the violent incidents and ignored the broader context and meanings attached to violent behaviour. They also argued that women’s acts of self-defence may be concealed by these methods and are thus described as women’s violence. Statistical data provide evidence that women are more likely than men to be victimised within intimate relationships, therefore a justifying for focus on gender and power as fundamental influences.

Feminist understandings of woman abuse In general, feminist approaches to woman abuse argue that male violence against an intimate woman partner results from a system of gender inequity and male domination. Dobash and Dobash (1979) in Violence Against Wives: A Case Against Patriarchy based their analysis of woman abuse on the problem of patriarchy and male domination and focused on how traditional ideas about marriage, the family and gender roles support male control and domination over women. In their study, men were found to have become violent when they perceived that their wives were not performing their duties in terms of prescribed gender roles (e.g. being a ‘good wife’). Within the broader patriarchal context, the family has been viewed as the basic unit of society with husbands being afforded authority over wives and children (Dobash & Dobash 1979). Notions about the privacy of the family and the authority of men have filtered into other social institutions such as the law and religion. Dobash and Dobash proposed that a husband’s use of violence toward his wife was a direct expression of his authority and power in the home and society at large. Radical feminist theories of violence against women recognise that intimate heterosexual relationships are not always safe for women since women are more likely to be victimised within the family (Duffy 1995). Theorists argue that the family is not randomly violent but this violence is usually directed at women. A critique of the ideology of the family and male authority is proposed, and radical feminists argue for the recognition of how and why women are oppressed within this context, as well as why they become the likely targets of male aggression. They argue that violence against women cannot be theorised without acknowledging male privilege and historically and socially institutionalised relations of power. Earlier feminist approaches that focused on patriarchy alone were criticised for silencing the experiences of many other victims of violence. A singular focus on gender overlooks intersection of multiple layers of identity, such as race, class, sexuality or ability status. If these layers are not given recognition, certain groups may not be deemed ‘legitimate’ victims and may be denied adequate protection from violence (Bograd 1999). For example, if gender remains the only focus, theorists would ignore how the effects of racism systematically

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Laws that discriminate against women (Equality Now 2004) Chile: The Civil Code stipulates that men control joint marital property and that they head the household. Guatemala, Lebanon and Uruguay: The Penal Code of these countries prescribes that men will not be held criminally accountable for rape, statutory rape, indecent assault and kidnapping when the perpetrator marries the victim who was raped, assaulted or kidnapped. Malaysia, India and Tonga: The Penal Codes of these countries exclude sexual intercourse by a man with his wife from the legal definition of rape. Yemen: The Personal Status Act enshrines that a wife be obedient to her husband ensuring that he may restrict her movements and require her to have sexual intercourse with him.

disadvantage black women (Richie & Kanuha 1997) and how their experiences of abuse may be complicated by issues such as poverty, marginalisation and a lack of access to resources. For a black woman, being a victim of woman abuse has very different consequences than it does for a white woman. Similarly, black perpetrators of violence are treated very differently to white men who have perpetrated violence against their partners. However, if these constructs (race, class, sexuality, etc.) are considered without according the adequate attention to gender, the danger is that we may conclude that women and men are equally violent and that their violence has similar contextual influences and the same consequences. Consequently, it becomes important to explore violence against women as a problem fundamentally influenced by gender and power but nested within a broader context characterised by other systems of domination and inequity. As a result of this criticism, feminist theorising has shifted toward an acknowledgement of the multiple sites of power and oppression that differentially affect the lives of women. The shifts in theorising woman abuse mirrors black feminist challenges to a narrow Western feminist preoccupation with patriarchy as the only source of women’s oppression. As Mama (1996) noted, black feminists have called for an integration of race, religion, class, sexuality, culture and other forms of difference into the analyses of violence against women. Research also shows that women’s experiences of violence are complicated by a number of intersecting forms of oppression including culture (Abraham 2000; Lui 1999), race (Dawes et al 2004; Mama 1996; Mathews et al 2004; Richie & Kanuha 1997), class (Gonzales de Olarte & Gavilano Llosa 1999; McCloskey 1996), sexuality (Shefer et al 2000; Wilkinson & Kitzinger 1993) and other forms of difference. Consistent with the shift away from a singular focus on patriarchy, other debates in feminist scholarship have led to the recognition that the category of a unified ‘woman’ around which feminist mobilisation took place only included a specific group of women (white, middle-class, heterosexual, etc.). Women who did not fall into this group were marginalised within feminist discourse. Black and other critical feminists redefined assumptions about ‘womanhood’ and ‘femininity’ to include women who have been marginalised within both feminist theory and practice (Bhavnani 1993). These feminist debates led to increased acknowledgement of the differences among women as a group.

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Apartheid and the separate development and social positioning of black and white women largely influenced difference debates in South Africa. Feminist debates have, amongst other issues, questioned whether black women could be adequately represented or ‘spoken for’ by white women. In South Africa debates about power relations amongst black and white women peaked at landmark gender conferences held between 1991 and 1992 (Serote 1992). In her commentary on the Women and Gender Conference held at the University of Natal in 1991, Lewis (1992) noted that the conference did not provide a forum for all women to actively explore and debate their differences and that the concerns of white academics dominated conference discussions. Black women were marginalised and not provided with a forum to discuss their grievances. Differences between the women, based primarily on race (but also class and other forms), were silenced. Meer (1997) outlined the most important debates in Agenda (a South African feminist journal) and showed that the theme of race and identity became one of the most debated issues in the history of the journal. By the same token, De la Rey (1997) reviewed the theoretical shifts that occurred within South African feminism and concurred that race and identity are central issues in the consideration of diversity amongst South African women. The shifts occurring within South African feminism are in accordance with international trends and emphasise a shift toward poststructuralist developments in feminist theory. Current feminist theorising, through its attention to multiplicity, subjectivity and power, largely draws upon the conceptual tools provided by post-structuralism.

A feminist post-structuralist understanding of woman abuse A post-structuralist framework emphasises that identities are in constant flux and may be multiple and contradictory (De la Rey 1997). The feminist debates in South Africa are largely based upon the differences between black and white women (Hendricks & Lewis 1994). While it is recognised that the dichotomisation of the experiences of black and white women is not always useful since it may increase the risk of essentialism, it is acknowledged that difference should be engaged with so that power relations are illuminated. In order to recognise a multiplicity of oppressions, the differences amongst women should be acknowledged. These differences, however, are not assumed to derive from the true essence of black or white womanhood, for example. Flax (1990) asserts that any feminist standpoint will be partial and that the category ‘woman’ does not exist ‘except within a specific set of (already gendered) relations – to man and to many concrete and different women’ (56). The understanding of gender difference, femininity and womanhood adopted in this chapter is in accordance with the feminist theoretical shifts charted above. A feminist poststructuralist epistemological paradigm, with its focus on subjectivity, power and language has been deemed suitable (Gavey 1989; Weedon 1987). Weedon (1987) defines feminist post-structuralism as: ‘a mode of knowledge production which uses post-structuralist theories of language, subjectivity, social processes and institutions to understand existing power relations and to identify areas and strategies for change (40–41). Post-structuralist thought emphasises a deconstruction of existing categories. The category ‘woman’ is deconstructed and gender identity and subjectivity are called into question. The

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Men’s notions of successful masculinity have been linked to their abilities to become or remain economic providers for their families. However, many men are finding it difficult to assume these roles and reportedly experience a thwarting of gender identities.

deconstruction of ‘woman’ leads to the assertion that women do not possess fixed essences but that ‘women’ are socially constructed as a category. Feminist post-structuralism accords attention to how language constructs meaning and reality. The assumption that language is transparent and reflects an already existing reality (Gavey 1997) is challenged. Language offers us various subject positions (or a range of ways of interpreting our lives) that we can take up in order to construct our realities (Weedon 1987). What an event means to a particular individual depends on the ways of interpreting the world and the discourses available to her or him at any particular moment. For example, the ways a woman will respond to and experience abuse are linked to her access to different ways of understanding (Weedon 1987). Those include her self-image, beliefs about masculinity and femininity and about marriage and family life. Therefore, if she endorses constructions of masculinity as inherently violent and femininity as inherently submissive she will be more likely to blame the abuse on her own provocation and less likely to challenge the man’s behaviour. Similarly, if a man supports dominant and authoritative forms of masculinity and believes in the use of violence to achieve particular ends, he will be less likely to perceive his violence as problematic. Feminist post-structuralism posits a subjectivity that is fluid, contradictory and multiple and argues for ‘discursively constructed subjectivities’ (Henwood et al 1998: 5), located in particular social, cultural, historical and political contexts. Views of self as stable, consistent and unambiguous are rejected. Weedon (1987) characterises subjectivity as ‘the conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions of the individual, her sense of herself and her ways

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of understanding her relation to the world’ (32). Feminist post-structuralism, as Gavey (1989) argues, denies the authority of individual experience and the ‘essential’ female nature. It is also able to tolerate contradiction, for example, expressed behaviours or desires inconsistent with one’s self-perceptions (Gavey 1989). The meanings of experience are not inherent in language but are shaped by broader systems, institutions and relations of power (Parker 1999) and language is understood to be located in discourse (Gavey 1989). The term ‘discourse’ has been used to ‘emphasise the organised way in which meanings cohere around an assumed central position, which gives them their value and significance’ (Hollway & Jefferson 2000: 14). Parker (1990) argues that discourses are systems of statements that construct objects. These ways of defining discourses are largely influenced by Foucauldian thought emphasising the role of power, language and broader institutional arrangements (Parker 1999), thus establishing a relationship between meaning, language and power. For example, the manner in which certain qualities such as passivity and aggression come to be defined as feminine or masculine, are linked to patriarchal power dynamics which accord men power, control and dominance over women. These qualities by themselves have no inherent meaning. However, the way they are defined within particular communities is linked to discursive power relations. There is a proliferation of studies addressing feminist issues from a post-structuralist perspective, opening up new possibilities for feminist scholarship on violence against women. Studies have focused on women’s heterosexual desire and negotiation (Gavey 1996; Shefer et al 2000), women’s aggression (Squire 1998) and narratives of romantic love (Jackson 2001). These areas illuminate new possibilities for theorising about woman abuse, which acknowledge multiplicity and variability in women’s experiences. In addition, the value of post-structuralist theorising is that it allows us to acknowledge women’s agency and resistance in abusive relationships. Gavey (1996) argues that relationship power (male dominance and female submission) is not unidirectional and static and that our theoretical endeavours should afford us a stance that allows for competing gendered discourses. The next section summarises some research that has opened the way for theorising of competing gendered discourses by focusing on how women within oppressive, violent relationships are able to actively resist and display varying levels of agency. The critical research that shows how women’s narratives of violence are both personal and social (Wood 2001) is also examined. At the personal level women construct narratives to describe their individual experiences. These experiences, however, reflect culturally and socially produced and sustained practices of femininity, masculinity, love and violence. I also discuss the research that explores men’s accounts of their own violence. These narratives, by and large, are personal constructions told in order to represent positive identities. As a result, men’s accounts are reinforced by justifications, minimisations and denial of abuse and violence. At the social level, men’s narratives are bound up with hegemonic constructions of masculinity and femininity.

Women’s accounts of violence Research shows that, as women respond to violence from their partners, they change and come to view themselves as survivors of abuse, rather than victims. Mills (1985), for example, explored the narratives of 10 women who had recently left their abusive partners

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and described how women employed a variety of strategies to manage the violence and abuse. Women’s strategies included placating their husbands, resisting or defying them, or leaving temporarily. Early in their relationships, women provided justifications for staying by minimising the seriousness of the violence or by defining the husband as the victim. In a similar vein, Kirkwood (1993) showed how women changed as they dealt with violence and, as a result, regained some power and control in their relationships – providing the impetus for action such as leaving, gaining support, seeking resources or threatening the abuser. She showed that power in the abusive relationship is not unidirectional and shifts according to women’s personal changes and changes in the relationship status. For example, when women temporarily leave their partners, they are in a better position to negotiate for change in the relationship. Early research that questioned why women stayed with abusive partners only considered women’s immediate contexts and tended to pathologise them for remaining with the men who violated them (e.g. Snell et al 1964). Hoff (1990), however, explored women’s experiences of violence while taking account of broader social and cultural issues. She argued that consideration of why women stay should account for the interaction between the meanings they attach to their experiences, the social and cultural context, women’s social networks and the practical realities of their lives. She described leaving abusive partners as a process that involves various decisions and strategies. Similarly, Hydén (1999) examined the narratives of women who left abusive partners and described leaving as an extended process. She also made the distinction between psychological and physical break-up. Hydén asserted that some women psychologically distance themselves from their partners long before they physically end the relationship. Hydén also argued that in abusive relationships, resistance was always present but seldom shown openly – she described it as a ‘hidden transcript’. This assertion and other research that constructs abused women as ‘survivors’ rather than ‘victims’, has huge implications for the empowerment of women within abusive relationships. In fact, rather than viewing women as helplessly trapped, some researchers have suggested that women ‘choose’ to stay (while negotiating their situational contexts). Baker (1997), for example, focused on the level of agency of women in abusive relationships. She initiated the study from the premise that a new cultural script urged women to leave abusive partners, maintain restraining orders and co-operate with the police. From the perspective of a participant observer at a shelter and through her analysis of interview and archival data, she illustrated how women employed active, reasoned strategies and resisted this dominant script. Many women in the study chose to stay in the relationship, ignored or lifted restraining orders and refused to call or co-operate with the police. Issues that mediated these decisions were fear of harassment from their partners, emotional connections to partners, children, economic dependence and a lack of institutional support or viable alternatives. Rather than pathologising women for not leaving abusive partners, Baker’s study focused on their capacities for making reasoned choices. She showed that contextual issues were an important consideration in women’s decisions to leave or stay with abusive partners, as confirmed by other studies (Lempert 1996). Given the shifts in the ways that the psychology of abused women has been understood, research has also started to address the question of how, rather than why, women stay in abusive relationships. In South Africa, Boonzaier (2001) investigated how women stay in abusive relationships by examining the meanings they attach to their experiences and

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the intersections of gender, class and culture. The study showed how women in abusive relationships utilised a variety of strategies (both personal and social-institutional) to end the violence in their lives and challenged constructions of women as passive, submissive victims of abuse. Women’s strategies and meanings were filtered through the particular socio-cultural context (characterised by violence, poverty and deprivation) within which their experiences occurred. In the study, the importance of the socio-cultural context was illustrated in the forms of violence that the participants chose to accentuate. A large proportion of the women focused on the issue of economic abuse and their concerns may have reflected aspects of the broader socio-economic environment such as the high levels of poverty, deprivation and unemployment in the study location. The options available to women were also negotiated within these structural and material constraints. Some women questioned the effectiveness of applying for a protection order to end the abuse. Their situations were complicated by economic dependence on the abuser and the difficulties they would encounter if their partners were sent to prison. In a similar vein, Abraham’s (2000) study of South Asian immigrants in the United States highlighted the difficulties women face in negotiating cultural norms that prescribe gender stereotypical behaviour. Women were sometimes reluctant to seek help from social institutions due to fears surrounding their immigrant status. However, within this context, women also employed a variety of strategies and negotiated personal, social and cultural boundaries in order to cope with the abuse meted out by their partners. Profitt (2000) investigated how a group of survivors of abuse in the United States made connections between their experiences of violence and political activism, through examining the narratives of 11 survivors involved in collective action, as well as through interviews with educators and activists in the antiviolence movement. She examined the process of change in abused women who subsequently became involved in political activism to end violence against women. Profitt showed how abused women underwent changes in consciousness and came to experience themselves differently, thus empowering them to fight for social change. This study is a valuable one, as it allows us to recognise that women who have experienced violence from their partners are able to institute action to change their conditions, and even develop an activist consciousness regarding violence against women. Thus, individual abused women identify with abused women as a group and attempt to work to change their social conditions. Research shows that women construct particular gendered identities for themselves and their partners in their narratives of violence and relationship (Boonzaier 2001). At times, women adopt hegemonic gendered constructions and at other times they resist them. Women’s narratives contain culturally embedded stories of romance, love or fairytale, employed in order to make sense of their experiences. Towns and Adams (2000) utilised a form of feminist post-structuralist discourse analysis to explore the significance of discourses of romantic love in women’s narratives of violent relationships. They showed how cultural constructions of romance and love serve the function of binding women in abusive relationships. These discourses have implications for women’s constructions of femininity as passive and accepting of the abuse. They also have implications for how women construct their partners, for example rationalising the partner’s violent behaviour by creating a split between the good and bad persona. Towns and Adams argue that women first have to resist the multiple socially constructed depictions of love and its related identities before they are

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able to leave a violent partner. Similarly, Jackson (2001) showed how young women who discussed their experiences of abuse in heterosexual relationships appropriated the romantic narrative. This narrative provides specific solutions to a partner’s violent behaviour. Women who situate themselves within this narrative have to adopt traditional romantic feminine ideals and provide love, care and tenderness in order to change the abuser. Passivity and the submission of women are inscribed in the romantic narrative. Jackson also showed how women resisted the victim status by not labelling their partners as violent or abusive or by denying that their experiences were abusive. Although denial of the victim status may be empowering for women, it may also keep the abuse invisible (Jackson 2001). Women talking gender and violence Dual identity construction (Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde) I don’t wanna condemn him because you know one side of him, he’s a good person … he’s an excellent father, he’s a lov — he is a lovely husband when he’s got the time. You know we we we we can be great together. When we when we are in love we are good together, we can be great together. We can do such a lot together, if we could only overcome this. Femininity as passive, nurturing and caring It was terrible, I always had to please him you know. I could never think of myself, I always had to think of the peace and to keep him happy. Everything that I did I had to do for him, you know. Everything that I do, I concentrate on him And I always like used to tell Frank: ‘Look I don’t want to go away from you because I know where you going to end up. Who’s going to look after you?’

Consistent with the above, Wood (2001) showed how women in her study conformed to the established gender narrative (male dominance and female submission) by making excuses for their partners’ violence and internalising expectations that they should care for and nurture their romantic partners. Wood also showed how women described their relationships as consistent with established fairytale narratives in their beliefs, for example, of their partners as Prince Charming and their assumptions that love can conquer any hardship. As a result of the violence, however, the fairytale romantic narrative was unattainable or could not be sustained. Women thus reinterpreted their experiences and drew on the assumptions of the ‘dark romance narrative’ (Wood 2001: 244). This narrative constructs violence as a typical feature of intimate relationships implying that women have to tolerate the ‘dark side’ of their partners and not abandon their relationships. This narrative is also characterised by discourses scripting standards of adult womanhood or femininity as incomplete unless partnered by a man. Wood showed how women made meaning of their relationships by drawing on resources provided by the culture and how their narratives ‘reflect and embody culturally produced, sustained, and approved narratives of gender and romance’ (257). In sum, this body of research lends credence to the argument that women negotiate and renegotiate strategies and alternatives within abusive relationships in order to cope within their immediate constraints (Baker 1997; Lempert 1996) and also to allow them to gain a modicum of power and control in their relationships (Kirkwood 1993). The research also indicates that the process of dealing with the violence from their partners provides the

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impetus for personal change in women (Kirkwood 1993; Mills 1985; Profitt 2000). Some women shift from an individual identification as ‘victim’ to identification as a ‘survivor’ and develop an activist consciousness regarding violence against women. These changes may be positive and allow women to gain some power and ultimately leave the abusive partners. In addition, the research reveals a complex intertwined relationship between gender construction, violence and popular cultural and social narratives. Women appropriate discourses of romantic love, with implications for the construction of femininity and masculinity in their relationships. A similar trend is discernible in men’s accounts of their relationships.

Men’s accounts of violence The critical literature on abusive men is not as well developed but feminist researchers have taken an in-depth, interpretive approach to abusers’ explanations and accounts of violence. Studies have explored how men talk about or account for perpetrating violence in their relationships (Hearn 1998; Ptacek 1990; Stamp & Sabourin 1995). Researchers found that men typically employ excuses and justifications in order to minimise or deny their use of violence. Men frequently describe violence as a loss of control, temporary insanity and accumulated frustration. Other reasons men offer for their violence include external factors such as the behaviour of their wives, alcohol or jealousy (Stamp & Sabourin 1995). These discourses of blame, denial and minimisation are employed at the individual and societal levels, frequently legitimising male violence against women. Although men often employ expressive tension discourses (O’Neill 1998) and describe violence as a loss of control or accumulated frustration, they also draw on instrumental discourses and describe the use of violence as a means to exert authority and control over women (Dobash & Dobash 1998). In Britain, Hearn (1998) analysed how men talk about and understand their violence against women. Hearn’s findings concurred with those of other studies, in that he found that men excused, denied, minimised and justified their violence. They set the context for violence by describing their own difficulties (e.g. family or social problems). Men in the study also used a variety of strategies to justify their use of violence. For example, they used textual devices such as invoking dual identities in the form of the violent and the non-violent self. Reitz (1999) similarly found that as men described their violent actions, they were more likely to depict themselves as ‘out of control’, at times describing a dual identity (Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde). Hearn also found that men constructed masculine identities through the acts of violence and were able to control women through its use. The participants in Reitz’s (1999) study also described using violence in an instrumental manner to assert dominance or preferred forms of positive identity in their relationships. In research exploring women’s narratives of their relationships, the results are not dissimilar. Women also invoke dual identities of their partners (Boonzaier 2001; Jackson 2001; Towns & Adams 2000), which serve a similar function: to portray the man as not completely violent. For women it justifies remaining in abusive relationships and for men it is a form of excusing or denying violent behaviour. Consistent with post-structuralist developments, researchers exploring batterers’ experiences have also accorded attention to the language men use to describe their violence. Adams, Towns and Gavey (1995) showed how abusive men employed a variety of rhetorical

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devices – underpinned by discourses of male dominance and entitlement – to discuss their own violence. Eisikovits and Buchbinder (1997) explored the metaphors batterers use in order to understand their intrapersonal and interpersonal realities. The analysis showed that men employed three types of metaphors. The use of war metaphors implied that men constructed marital life as a war zone in which they needed to use violence as a means of defence. Men also employed metaphors of the self (inner space) as dangerous, describing the violence as uncontrollable and explosive. Finally, metaphors of de-escalation and balancing were employed in order to reconstruct the events and bring about order. Eisikovits and Buchbinder argue that metaphors are not just figures of speech but allow for powerful insights into the ways that abusive men perceive reality. Wood (2004) conducted a study with 22 incarcerated men who self-identified as perpetrators of woman abuse. These men justified their violence by arguing that their partners disrespected their authority as men, that they had the right to discipline their partners, that the women provoked them, and that their partners accepted their abuse. The men also dissociated or disconnected from identifying as ‘an abuser’ by arguing that they were not ‘really’ abusive and that their violence resulted from external causes (e.g. alcohol, drugs, or medical problems). Some men in Wood’s study showed remorse for their actions by admitting to violence and acknowledging its wrongfulness. Wood showed that two dominant but contradictory narratives of masculinity were interwoven into men’s accounts of justification, dissociation and remorse. The first of these narratives involved the patriarchal or traditional script of male dominance and entitlement. Beliefs supporting this narrative included ideas that men should dominate interpersonal relationships, that women should be subservient to and appease their men partners, and that violence is a normal part of manhood. Wood also showed that men’s violence sometimes resulted from their fears that they did not measure up to the patriarchal or expected standard of manhood. The second narrative prevalent in men’s accounts was that men should protect and safeguard women. Many men held both views of manhood (dominant and protective) and the tension between these was not easily resolved.

Men talking gender and violence Dual identity construction (Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde) … when I’m sober I’m a totally different person. Justifications for violence I sound like somebody that’s trying to justify what I’m doing you know. It’s that I’m not a violent person, I’m not. But if you push me too far then you push me off the edge and, I’m gonna come back to you with all I’ve got. I I felt that that, not unless she provoked me while I was in this rage would I really go and intentionally hit her. Husband-as-parent; wife-as-child But what I’m saying to you now is that only thing – she’s a stubborn woman. She don’t want to listen to me. And that drives me crazy, ja. I can’t take it. Because you are my wife you have to listen to me. You understand? And if you don’t want to listen to me, what must I do?

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Anderson and Umberson (2001) examined the construction of gender in men’s accounts of violence by interviewing 33 participants in a programme for abusive men in the United States. The authors described violence as gendered practice whereby men ‘accomplish’ or ‘do’ gender through the perpetration of violence. Like Hearn (1998), they contend that men construct particular masculine identities through the practice of and discourse about violence. The practice and discourse of violence was an attempt to reconstruct masculinities that were contested and destabilised by cultural and structural changes. Men in the study constructed gender in their accounts by suggesting that their wives were responsible for the violence, by claiming to be victims of a biased legal system, and through positioning themselves as emasculated victims of controlling or domineering partners. In a similar manner, Buchbinder and Eisikovits (2004) sketched the changes in abusive men’s identities as a result of police intervention in cases of woman abuse. They showed how men experienced repeated encounters with the police as disempowering and as a betrayal by their partners. Men experienced a crisis in their identities and attempted to negotiate this by presenting a normative (positive) self despite their violent actions. Buchbinder and Eisikovits also revealed that men experienced a changing sense of self and came to view themselves as oppressed by their partners and the legal system. As a result, men perceived shifts in the power dynamics of their relationships. In South Africa, there is a paucity of research on men who perpetrate violence in their intimate relationships. Some research has begun to address this gap by problematising the relationship between violence and constructions of masculinity in young adult relationships (Shefer et al 2000; Wood & Jewkes 2001). For example, Wood and Jewkes explored how young men discussed their experiences of practising violence against women partners. They found connections between young men’s talk about violence and predominant forms of masculinity available in a particular community. For these young men, the achievement of successful masculinity involved having multiple sexual partners. A similar finding was evident in another South African study, where almost 70% of abusive men had been unfaithful to their marital partners (Boonzaier 2005). In the latter study, marital infidelity was constructed as a unique manifestation of abuse and as a symptom of men’s power in heterosexual relationships. Furthermore, Boonzaier (2005) also showed that men’s notions of successful masculinity were linked to their abilities to become or remain economic providers for their families. However, as a result of the changing socio-economic climate, many men were finding it difficult to assume these roles and reportedly experienced a thwarting of gender identities (Moore 1994), that of not being able to properly adopt a gendered subject position vis-à-vis their women partners. The thwarting of gender identities may be argued to result in a crisis in men’s gendered subjectivity, which could result in violence. However, men’s narratives of powerlessness and emasculation may also be used to retrospectively justify their violent behaviour. Further South African research is necessary in order to explore how abusive men understand and define their experiences within particular socio-cultural contexts. In sum, men may explain their violence by employing justifications, excuses and denials. In their talk and perpetration of violence, men construct or ‘do’ gender and draw on culturally specific forms of masculinity in order to assert a preferred gender identity, in response to a perceived threat to their masculine identities. In a similar vein, women sometimes resist or take up hegemonic constructions of femininity and negotiate personal,

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social and cultural boundaries in dealing with partner violence. The research also shows that taking a post-structuralist approach to individuals’ stories allows for a dynamic perspective aimed at accessing the actors’ own meanings and understandings of their experiences of violence, victimisation and perpetration.

Conclusion In this chapter we have shown how men’s violence against intimate women partners cannot be adequately examined without according due attention to the influence of gender and power. The chapter also showed that feminist post-structuralism provides a useful lens through which to understand the problem of woman abuse. We have illustrated how the literatures on perpetrators and victims of violence follow a similar trajectory, yet seem to be developing independently. We are commonly provided with one-sided accounts (mostly from victims and less often from perpetrators) and there is a dearth of research analysing both partners in a violent relationship. An integration of research on this issue is important as an exclusive focus on women entrenches existing stereotypes (i.e. that they are responsible for the violence against them). Future research should integrate the findings from the critical research on women and men’s understandings of violence and examine how women and men in an intimate dyad construct and negotiate narratives about their experiences of victimisation and perpetration.

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V. Bozalek

Chapter 10

Analysing a text on the prevailing paradigm of ‘family’ in the ‘psy’ professions Vivienne Bozalek

Introduction In this chapter the notion of ‘the family’ is interrogated by examining an excerpt from a traditional text on intervention with families. The chapter sets out to achieve three overall aims or objectives: the first is to illustrate how the ideas expressed in the text, which presents itself as a neutral, scientific account of a family situation, and is presented to readers as an authoritative account, is actually based on particular assumptions and value judgements. The analysis of the text shows that, rather than being a value-free universal account of ‘the family’ and of the ‘psy’1 professions’ benign response to the circumstances which are described, the text is, in fact, saturated with value judgements that reflect its having been written from a particular theoretical perspective. These assumptions include the normality of the nuclear family form, prescribed roles that family members should take and what the role of the professional working with the family should be. The second aim is to demonstrate how texts such as the one examined in this chapter could be very influential in determining practice in relation to working with families in the ‘psy’ professions. The analysed text can be seen as an example of what Foucault (1977a) refers to as a ‘disciplinary practice’ in that it creates a sense of what is normal and proper to do and think about ‘the family’ and the ‘psy’ professions’ response to the problems perceived therein. In this way, the ‘expert’ discourse normalises a particular view of ‘the family’ and the ‘appropriate’ professional response to the situation described in the text. The third aim is to suggest that official texts such as the one analysed in this chapter can be juxtaposed and compared to students’ own lived experiences of their family circumstances in South Africa which is often at odds with what they read. The knowledge that human service professional students have of their own

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families could be considered to be what Foucault described as ‘subjugated knowledges’. These accounts can be used to render visible standard textbook notions of ‘the family’ thus providing discursive space for resisting these claims to truth which are actually historically and culturally limited and specific, but not acknowledged as being so, and developing counter-hegemonic discourses. The excerpt analysed in detail below is taken from a set of readings given to students in a Family and Child Care course at the University of the Western Cape: Working with People in Crisis: Theory and Practice by Samuel Dixon (1979). This deals with crisis intervention – a still popular method taught to students studying family therapy for dealing with various crises that occur in individuals’ lives. The theoretical paradigm upon which crisis intervention is based is generally systems theory. Dixon’s is a fairly representative and typical text on ‘the family’ and ‘family therapy’ to which students are exposed at South African tertiary institutions. The Dixon text serves to illustrate how, in the process of explaining how family therapy is meant to take place, both families and ‘psy’ professionals are constructed in specific ways. ‘Psy’ professionals are positioned in these texts as people who are meant to be looking for what is wrong with families, in other words, for the characteristics of family pathologies. Generally, family structure consists of a mother, father, and one or more children. A crisis can be precipitated by a threat to family structure such as the introduction of a new member or the loss of a member. The single-parent family is vulnerable to the development of a crisis because of a deficit in structure. It is deprived of a resource that generally gives strength and support to family structure. The strength of family structure is determined by how each member fulfills [sic] functions and roles. In this regard the heart of family functioning is the marriage. The therapist assesses the contribution of the marital relationship to the family crisis. What is the relationship between husband and wife? Are they together or disunited and competitive? A divided family cannot be a strong family. Is the marriage an unwillfully dominate [sic] and submissive relationship? Revolving around the marital relationship are the functions and roles of the children. What are the children’s roles and expectations individually and collectively? Are they perceived as respected individuals, or are they used by one or both parents? If so, how and in what way? For example, is one a scapegoat who is keeping the family from total disintegration? What is the nature of feelings and emotional atmosphere in the family? What is the nature of the communication process? How does each member feel about the others and about the relationship of others in the family? What needs are being met in the family? What needs are not being met, and how are members reacting to unmet needs? In sum, the assessment and evaluation of the family requires the evaluation of the family as a total unit and of each individual’s contribution to its total functioning. The therapist needs to answer such questions in order to know the degree of debilitation and what areas of weakness requiring treatment and sources of strength that [sic] can be used to help establish equilibrium and strengthen family functioning. Synthesising this information enables the therapist to formulate a dynamic explanation of the causes of the family crisis (Dixon 1979: 165–166).

The ways in which ‘the family’ is constructed in Dixon’s and similar texts is reliant upon a number of assumptions, which are elaborated on below. The assumptions that emanate from this family form continue to hold considerable sway in society, not only in education circles of the ‘psy’ professions but also in the practice of these professions and in the construction and implementation of social policy. Texts tend to be presented to students as authoritative

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accounts. As such, they may be highly influential in determining what is doable or thinkable in relation to professional practice with families. In order to demonstrate the possible effect that texts such as the one above may have, it is now evaluated in terms of the possible meanings that could be conveyed to readers. In what follows some of the major normalising assumptions in the excerpt quoted above are identified and the ways in which these assumptions are problematic are discussed. By ‘normalising assumptions’ I refer to what is taken for granted as ‘normal’, and this concept is discussed in greater detail later, utilising Foucault’s (1977a) notion of ‘normalisation’. In order to clarify which section of the excerpt is being dealt with, the section that is being commented on is repeated in the boxes below. Generally, family structure consists of a mother, father, and one or more children. A crisis can be precipitated by a threat to family structure such as the introduction of a new member or the loss of a member. The single-parent family is vulnerable to the development of a crisis because of a deficit in structure. It is deprived of a resource that generally gives strength and support to family structure (Dixon 1979: 165).

The assumption here involves the nuclear family. The family is presented as consisting of a mother, a father and a couple of children. The nuclear family is taken to be natural and universal. The use of the word ‘generally’ could mean either that this family form is statistically the most common and hence, by implication, universal, or that it is the normatively desirable family form to which all families ought to aspire. In fact, these two assertions are often combined: something that is considered as universal is often also considered to be norm(al) and worthy – the way we should behave. In ascribing the status of universality to the nuclear family, Dixon portrays it as the self-evident or desirable and good way of living (Dickerson 1995). The single-parent family is described as suffering from a ‘deficit in structure’. This reinforces the idea that something or someone is missing which should ordinarily and properly be there. There is no distinction made as to the particular form of single-parenthood – whether it has occurred through separation, divorce or the second/other parent never having been part of the picture at all. Furthermore, the gender of the single-parent is not mentioned, although it is implied, through ‘common knowledge’, and through empirical reality, that single parent households are mostly female-headed. Functionalist descriptions of ‘the family’ commonly represent single-parent families in this genderless way (Hare-Mustin 1987; Perelberg 1990). The idea that single-parent families are pathological and represent a deviation from the norm does not accord with the commonness of this particular family form in contemporary society. According to Dixon (1979) in the above extract, the multitude of people in the world living in (by implication) female-headed single-parent households are ‘deprived of a resource that generally gives strength and support to family structure’. Although Dixon does not specify that it is the father who is absent, the way this statement is constructed implies that it is a male (breadwinner) partner who is the missing resource and source of strength and support. The assumption that the male breadwinner is a source of strength and support is flawed

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in that it is premised on the notions that the resources which the breadwinner acquires are equitably available and distributed to all members of the household and that men are neither abusive nor violent in their relationships with their partners and children. The single-parent (single-mother) family is represented as being located at the polar opposite of the normative two-parent family, and as representing a deficit in the family structure as compared with the (superior) norm of the nuclear family. This view does not take into account the problems attending two-parent families in which the above notions concerning the male breadwinner do not apply. Its effect is to render the single-parent family and, in particular, the single-mother family, pathological and therefore accessible for scrutiny and intervention by ‘psy’ professionals. The manner in which single-parent households are socially and economically positioned in terms of societal resources is not addressed in the text. Rather, the problem of singleparenting is located within the family itself, which is seen as being responsible for the deprivation of resources. By using terms such as ‘deficit’ and ‘deprived’ Dixon creates and reinforces an idea that problems are located within the family itself. The term ‘generally’, used twice, gives emphasis to the notion of the normalcy of the nuclear family and the pathologisation of all other family forms. The strength of family structure is determined by how each member fulfills functions and roles (Dixon 1979: 165).

This reference to the strength of a family does not indicate any distinction between how different members of the family may be strengthened. No disaggregation in terms of gender or generation is mentioned, and it is assumed that the so-called ‘strength of family structure’ affects all family members equally and in the same way. Such an idea is based on a theory (namely systems theory) which is similar to functionalism in that it considers that the whole is greater than the parts and cannot be reduced to the segments or components that make it up (Rivett & Street 2003; Cheal 1991; Morgan 1975; 1985).2 The reference to ‘functions and roles’ in the excerpt on page 154 is based on the assumption/presupposition that one’s biological make-up necessarily leads to the assumption of particular ‘roles’ and ‘functions’. In texts such as these, the biological mother is usually regarded as the primary care-giver, the biological father as the natural breadwinner and the biological children as the natural dependants who are socialised by the parents and specifically the biological mother. In other words, these ‘functions’ and ‘roles’ are based upon theories which maintain that the nuclear family form is both natural and universal as a normative institution. Yet, as Morgan (1975) has pointed out, this particular family form became prevalent in the Western world only during the time of industrialisation, and did so precisely because it provided for the needs of society at that time. The nuclear family thus came to be considered best able to fulfil the functions required for survival in industrialised society where work had become separated from home; it became a distinct and separate but integral part of the greater system of industrialised society. It was for that reason that functionalist arguments, propounded by theorists such as Parsons and Bales (1956), developed a view of the functions of the ‘family’ as being the rearing and socialisation of children and the emotional support of a workforce

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in which only men took a direct part. Each man’s stay-at-home wife was supposed to be engaged in the so-called ‘expressive role’, that is, the emotional care-taking of the children and the husband, while the breadwinner husband took on the so-called instrumental role by providing those in the household with resources derived from his wages (Parsons 1970; Parsons & Bales 1956). According to such theories, women are located in the private sphere of the household and men in the public world of waged labour. In terms of such an approach the gendered division of labour is then translated into inevitable sex role differentiation, which is seen as functional for the individual and the family as a whole (Morgan 1975; Thorne 1982). The presumed ‘naturalness’ of these fixed roles and functions leaves little room for flexibility and negotiation as to who should assume which role. Armed with such a set of ideas, the job of a ‘psy’ professional such as a family therapist is to assess how, whether, and to what extent each person in a family is fulfilling his or her ‘natural’ function or role. Such an assessment then allows the therapist to judge the family either positively or negatively, using as a criterion a measure of the extent to which family members conform to what is expected of them in terms of a prescribed sociological theory and model of the family. Working in such a way occludes recognition by the family therapist of any power relations between family members. Indeed it effectively means that notions of power relations are simply accepted and therefore given no consideration. Ideas of individual dependence and independence, and of equality and inequality in the family, cannot therefore be entertained. It is merely assumed by the therapist that family members will perform their prescribed roles adequately and, if they will not or cannot do so, the therapist is obliged to ‘intervene’. All this is despite the fact that in other disciplines such as anthropology and sociology, functionalism has for some time now been recognised as ethnocentric and old-fashioned (Pahl 1999). The text above implies that everything in the family depends upon the marital relationship. The use of the word ‘heart’ both centres the family on the marital relationship and conveys notions of a romantic relationship upon which the normative marriage is assumed to be based. If partners are construed as disunited, as disagreeing or competing with one another, then they constitute a divided core of the family unit and are implicitly therefore in a ‘family crisis’. In other words, marital differences can only be seen and understood as problems and as representing a pathological condition that underlies all and any other issues that may exist in ‘the family’. In this regard the heart of family functioning is the marriage. The therapist assesses the contribution of the marital relationship to the family crisis. What is the relationship between husband and wife? Are they together or disunited and competitive? A divided family cannot be a strong family. Is the marriage an unwilfully dominate and submissive relationship (Dixon 1979: 166)?

A view that the marital relationship is central to both the successes and the ‘crisis’ of the family works from an assumption that a particular kind of marital relationship already exists in the family unit and that it is of a particular kind: heterosexual (husband and wife

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are mentioned); married rather than co-habiting; and a long-term stable relationship in which both partners are physically present in the household. These assumptions reinforce notions of what is taken for granted or regarded as normal. The question as to whether the marriage is ‘an unwilfully dominate [sic] or submissive relationship’ suggests a potential loss of individual choice that, implicitly, might and should be involved in the form that the marital relationship takes. Yet the statement includes no mention of gender, implying that dominance and submission are generally gender-neutral in a marital relationship. Furthermore, differences in experience of the marital relationship are elided in that there is no distinction suggested between the experience of husbands and wives with regard to dominance and submission. The pervasiveness of male dominance and even abuse in intimate relationships is neither alluded to nor entertained – gender relations simply do not exist according to this account.3 In other words, the asymmetries and inequalities that inhere in the distinctive roles proposed for men/husbands and women/wives (breadwinner husband in the public sphere and emotional, caring wife in the private sphere) are not considered. It is this very asymmetry that should be one of the foci of the ‘problems’ that are assessed and addressed by family therapists. What are the children’s roles and expectations individually and collectively? Are they perceived as respected individuals, or are they used by one or both parents? If so, how and in what way? For example, is one a scapegoat who is keeping the family from total disintegration (Dixon 1979: 166)?

The reference in the above excerpt to one or both parents using the child refers to an idea which is common in family therapy, that one member of the family, usually a child, is carrying the symptomatic burden of all the family pathology (Rivett & Street 2003). This person, the ‘scapegoat’, is then blamed by others in the family as the problematic family member in order to hide the real problems of a ‘dysfunctional’ or pathological marital relationship. In other words, the core significance of the marital relationship and its breakdown is concealed by laying blame on a family member who is not part of the marital dyad. The ‘delinquent child’ or the ‘drug abusing adolescent’ may thus be given the label, in family therapy, as the ‘identified patient’ who is carrying the pain of other family members and is ‘acting out’ misdemeanours as a consequence (Rivett & Street 2003). A number of conclusions can be drawn from the manner in which the above excerpt presents the problems it does. First, individuals’ problems, such as becoming a scapegoat for the family, are construed as arising from problems existing internally in the relationships in ‘the family’. A consequence is that the possibility that problems such as drug abuse or juvenile ‘delinquency’ might originate externally, in school or community relations, for example, is not considered. Secondly, the implications of broader social structural pressures – such as race, gender and generation inequalities – in the construction of these problems are entirely absent. Problems are seen to result from faulty and dysfunctional relationships between family members, particularly marital partners, who, in terms of the theory underlying these arguments, should be relating to one another according to fixed roles associated with the various social statuses thought to be normative within the (equally normative) family. The identified problem is regarded as an apolitical phenomenon where power relations are of no consequence. Thirdly, the situation is presented as if it were one where, in the event

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of the absence of a child or other family member who can act as the family scapegoat, the entire family would collapse. What this suggests is that a notion of circular causality is being promoted: the child is being identified by the family as the problem in order to save ‘one or both parents’ from acknowledging that the problems really lie with them and their dysfunctional relationship. Finally, what members of the family have identified as a problem is then simply reframed as another problem that is part of the family dynamic. Family members must therefore then be re-educated about the ‘real’ and the ‘underlying’ problems and accept the sovereignty of the expert’s version of the problem. What is the nature of feelings and emotional atmosphere in the family? What is the nature of the communication process? How does each member feel about the others and about the relationship of others in the family? What needs are being met in the family? What needs are not being met, and how are members reacting to unmet needs (Dixon 1979: 166)?

The question and answer form of this excerpt implies that it is the family therapist or professional person who should know and be the authoritative expert – the one who is in a position to answer these questions from the ‘raw data’ of what the family members give her or him in answer to the questions. The passage also gives credence to the idea that family-based problems are understood in terms of ‘feelings’, ‘emotions’ and ‘communication patterns’. That idea is needed to legitimate what ‘psy’ professionals do when they engage in assessments of communication patterns, an aspect of family life that is seen as separate from wider societal processes. Needs are then construed by implication as emotional and as having the potential to be met within the context of ‘the family’ on its own. Problems too are perceived to be intra-familial and addressable and ‘treatable’ within the exclusive context of ‘the family’. By implication, then, needs are relegated to family communication patterns and regarded as being amenable to family-based therapeutic interventions that make no explicit reference to circumstances beyond the boundaries of the family. Stress is thus placed on ‘psy’ professionals to give special attention to the private sphere of the family, leaving individual family members unmarked in terms of race, gender and generation, except in so far as the issue of gender may be reflected in the behavioural norms and expected roles to be played in the properly functioning family. The public sphere is thus virtually never mentioned in relation to the problems experienced, with the consequence that ‘the family’ is completely decontextualised. In sum, the assessment and evaluation of the family requires the evaluation of the family as a total unit and of each individual’s contribution to its total functioning. The therapist needs to answer such questions in order to know the degree of debilitation and what areas of weakness requiring treatment and sources of strength that can be used to help establish equilibrium and strengthen family functioning. Synthesising this information enables the therapist to formulate a dynamic explanation of the causes of the family crisis (Dixon 1979: 166).

The message here is that the therapist is meant to regard the family as a total and effectively closed unit. She or he is meant to attempt to re-establish equilibrium in the unit by ‘treating’

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the weaknesses she or he finds in it, and by supporting the strengths she or he identifies in it. In this way, the therapist is expected to attempt to normalise the lives of the targeted family in terms of the functional model of what constitutes a normal family. She or he is expected to frame the problems she or he observes in that family within the context of a traditional functionalist notion of ‘the family’, with a breadwinner husband, a care-giving wife and their dependent biological children. The asymmetries and inequalities within these relationships are rendered normal and natural, and ‘equilibrium’ is restored to the traditional roles of the nuclear family as constructed in terms of a functionalist model in which the family functions almost autonomously, independent of the remainder of the supposedly functioning whole that is society. The very term ‘treatment’, as used here by Dixon (1979), has specific connotations that relate to a medical model where the professional practitioner or therapist is regarded as an authoritative ‘expert’. The therapist’s views reign supreme here, rather than those of the family members or those derived from the collaboration of the therapist with the family members. In such a hierarchical model, the ‘expert’ therapist constructs the problem as a disease or pathology, identifies the appropriate treatment strategy, and then convinces family members of the necessity of the prescribed treatment. The hierarchical manner in which the decisions/assessments or diagnoses are made – by the therapist as ‘expert’ rather than by the family members as experts – is obscured by the supposedly neutral knowledge upon which the skills of the therapist are believed to be based. The power which exists in this kind of hierarchical relationship is masked by the supposedly benevolent attitude which the therapist is meant to have towards members of her or his target family. The therapist is assumed to be well-intentioned and to have at heart the interests of all members of the target family. Foucault’s (1980) critical method of understanding power is useful here, in that it locates power outside conscious intention. Rather than asking ‘who is in power?’ or how one person dominates another, he asks how power manages to install itself or how subjects become constituted. In the processes of assessing and intervening in the family, which processes can themselves be regarded as techniques of power, the family members are positioned in specific ways. This power not only subjugates, it also frames the individual’s sense of self as a ‘normal’ mother, father, daughter or son, and the assumptions and expectations that accompany these positions within the nuclear family in the view of the therapist. This is how family members would willingly submit to these forms of assessment and intervention from the therapist, producing what Foucault (1977: 138) referred to as ‘docile bodies’.

The ‘psy’ professions as disciplinary practice The analysis of the above excerpt has demonstrated how therapeutic practitioners in the ‘psy’ professions are expected to develop a sense of their right to control and regulate family lifestyles, and how that derives from their development and application of normalising tools such as family assessment and evaluation of family problems. Furthermore, the analysis shows how the text presents the family as a separable and distinct social unit that should be functional in particular normative ways in order to secure the wellbeing of its members. In the section that follows, the wider implications of the analysis of the Dixon text are made within a theoretical framework making use of Foucault’s (1977) concept of ‘disciplinary

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practices’, in which the ‘psy’ professions can be regarded as part of human sciences that are involved in regulating and stipulating norms of human behaviour. Foucault (1977) traced the development of the disciplinary practices which replaced the sovereign power of public torture for crimes and other breaches of the law in France in the early eighteenth century. According to Foucault, deviations from what was constructed as the norm in terms of behaviour came to be addressed by means of interventions which were constructed to change them through the application of more subtle means than public torture. These interventions included processes of formal observation leading to regulation and the normalisation of subjects by authoritative experts on human social and psychological behaviour (professionals). Foucault argued that the process was such that it led to the subject engaging in self-surveillance: the gaze of the professional was internalised and exercised by the subject him- or herself. This aspect is reflected in the Dixon (1979) text where he proposes to students of ‘psy’ professions that they need to learn to constitute their subjects in conformity with familist4 norms. This` instruction can be seen as a reflection of the extent to which these professions form part of a disciplinary practice. Disciplinary practices such as conventional psychology, social work or psychiatry are not regarded as nakedly coercive and controlling in the way that penal institutions, for example, would be. The Foucauldian perspective, however, maintains that by exerting a subtle form of control over people, human service professionals attempt to achieve what their disciplines set out for them to do: to shape individuals according to a particular norm and thereby to discipline them in terms of that norm (to normalise them) without making them aware of what is happening. The objective of this process is to root out deviance and pathology by moral regulation of what is constructed as normal. In this instance, it is only the ‘psy’ professional who is entrusted with the ability to distinguish what is normal from what is deviant, by virtue of the ‘expert’ knowledge she or he possesses. In other words, the subject of surveillance does not have the power to define his or her own interpretation of the circumstances. As Foucault proclaimed: The judges of normality are present everywhere. We are in the society of the teacherjudge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the ‘social worker’-judge; it is on them that the universal reign of the normative is based; and each individual, wherever he may find himself, subjects it to his body, his behaviour, his aptitudes, his achievements (Foucault 1977: 304). Foucault emphasises that his point ‘is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous’ (Rabinow 1984: 343). Taking that as a starting point, the sort of power that ‘psy’ practitioners exercise could be regarded as more dangerous than the power that inheres in more overt forms of disciplining, such as institutionalisation. That is because such power is much more subtle and difficult to identify than the overt exercise of power that one finds in formal disciplinary institutions. Foucault saw the more subtle form of power as a ‘modern power’ of normalisation and surveillance rather than power in the ‘ancient regime’, which was more coercive and directed at the physical body. The language, rhetoric and manner of conceptualisation that one finds in works such as Dixon’s (1979) make it difficult to identify where relations of power are to be found. This is because the language used is presented as neutral, and because the therapist is presented as an objective professional who is necessarily both caring and desiring to help. Yet, it is

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precisely because such neutral language fails to address issues such as gender inequalities that its apparent neutrality is in fact a means of exercising a form of power.

‘Psy’ professionals as arbiters of the ‘normal’ Building upon Foucault’s critique of the human science professions, Jacques Donzelot (1979) and Nancy Fraser (1989) have written about human service workers as professionals who intervene in the realm that has come to be known as ‘the social’. Donzelot (1979) described the realm of the ‘social’ as neither public nor private. Rather, he claimed, the ‘social’ constitutes a new hybrid realm in which professions like psychology, psychiatry and social work exert power through scrutinising and weighing up the intimate details of people’s lives and intervening with suggestions and prescriptions for behaviour. In this way, these professions determine for clients what is normal. These professions have also developed various forms of ‘assessment’ (to determine whether family members are ‘normal’) and of ‘treatment’ (to deal with those who fall short of the norms). The practices and principles behind these methods are made to appear timeless and natural, in such a way that human service educators, practitioners, and students come to accept these norms without questioning their socially and politically constructed nature. A consequence is that traditional texts make it possible, or indeed require, in particular times and places, that ‘psy’ professionals accept what should be regarded as ‘the truth’ about ‘the family’ and what therapists should do in relation to deviations from the realisation of those truths. Because conventional texts have conveyed the idea of ‘family problems’ as ‘pathologies’ which can be ‘repaired’ or ‘cured’ by human service professionals through their giving attention to the communication patterns of members living in a household, they represent what Foucault (1980) would term a ‘regime of truth’, or a dominant discursive regime. This ‘regime of truth’ creates the types of discourse it accepts, and purports to function as ‘the truth’ about what family life is supposed to be. In other words, it exercises power over, regulates and governs the reader’s thoughts on family life and, in so doing, organises the reader’s experience. As Nancy Fraser (1989: 145) has put it, such discourses lend to the received idea of what family life is an ‘aura of facticity that discourages contestation’, thus excluding alternative ways of understanding family life. The underlying assumptions behind much of what is presented as ‘truth’ in such conventional texts is not made accessible to readers, nor are they ever explicitly interrogated as part of training programmes for ‘psy’ professionals. Nancy Fraser (1989: 156) also sees the ‘social’ as a site of discourse about people’s needs, specifically about problematic needs which have broken out of the domestic and/or official economic spheres that earlier contained them as ‘private matters’. In this terrain of the ‘social’, Fraser identifies a number of competing discourses or ways of talking about such problematic needs. One is the needs discourse of experts – the ‘psy’ professionals or ‘family therapists’ whose raison d’être is to intervene in a situation defined as problematic. This is the needs discourse implicit in the traditional Dixon text which forms the focus of the earlier part of this chapter. A second discourse identified by Fraser (1989) is the oppositional needs discourse in which social movements such as black, gay, lesbian, clients or workers articulate their views. Such a discourse subverts official discourses in that it reflects the voices of those ‘from below’, as Fraser (1989: 171) puts it. She is referring to those who have been marginalised, disdained or ignored and are regarded as deviant in terms of societal norms.

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Subjugated knowledges Alongside the official body of knowledge contained in conventional texts, is the knowledge students have of their own lived experiences which is often at odds with what they read. The knowledge that human service professional students have of their own families could be considered to be what Foucault described as ‘subjugated knowledges’. He defined these as: ... a whole set of knowledges that have been disqualified as inadequate to their task or insufficiently elaborated: naïve knowledges, located low down on the hierarchy, beneath the required level of cognition or scientificity ... It is through the reappearance of this knowledge, of these local popular knowledges, these disqualified knowledges, that criticism performs its work (Foucault 1980: 81–82). Thus, through considering students’ accounts of their own families, standard textbook notions of ‘the family’ can be interrogated and the blind spots in relation to ‘the family’ can be rendered visible. Students’ accounts have the potential to challenge the meaning-making of those accounts presented in traditional texts. Because traditional textbook notions of ‘the family’ subject students to normalising truths, which have the potential to shape their ideas of themselves as students and potential ‘psy’ professionals, opportunities for students to resist being complicit in their own subjugation should be made available to them through assignments which allow the critique of their own family circumstances and that of the service users they are working with. The validity of this process is emphasised by Foucault, in the context of prisoners’ subjugated knowledges: When prisoners began to speak they possessed an individual theory of prisons, the penal system, and justice. It is this form of discourse which ultimately matters, a discourse against power, the counter-discourse of prisoners and those we call delinquents – and not a theory about delinquency (Foucault 1977b: 209). This chapter makes visible an account of an official traditional text which incorporates normalisation and regulation of the audience to which it is directed, and it then suggests the possibility of juxtaposing official texts such as this one against what can be regarded as counter-discourses – students’ own accounts of their lives in South Africa. In so doing it attempts to show how different forms of knowledge come to be regarded as ‘the truth’ and to offer a space for social critique and renewal with regard to family studies in South Africa. Foucault’s framework is useful in that it allows us to see how, in a given period, a certain way of speaking predominates, excluding all other ways of speaking. For example, in the Dixon (1979) text discussed above, the single-parent (single-mother) family is problematised as suffering from a deficit in the family structure as compared with the (superior) norm of the nuclear family. In this way the single-parent family, and in particular the single mother, is rendered examinable for social work students who engage with such texts. The nuclear family is presented as the superior (because it is normal) family structure for the rearing of children, and the problematic single-mother family becomes the focus of the social work gaze through which specific types of social work ‘intervention’ and ‘assessment’ come to be prescribed and justified.

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Power as resistance: using students’ subjugated knowledges to inform the curriculum While Foucault wrote about the disciplinary nature of power, he also noted that power can be exercised as a form of resistance (Foucault 1979: 1991). If the nexus of power and knowledge is acknowledged in the curriculum, students can be alerted to how normalising discourses, found in mainstream texts on ‘the family’, attempt to socialise teachers and students of the ‘psy’ professions into specific types of knowledge. It is generally the educators whose knowledge is given public credit and credibility as being professional and ‘expert knowledge’, rather than students’ own ideas and experiences, which, as has already been discussed, remain hidden and unacknowledged as valuable sources of knowledge. Those who occupy privileged positions, such as human service professional writers and educators, are generally unaware of how these positions have influenced their lives (Hardy 2001; Schiele 1996; Swigonski 1996; Tronto 1993). For example, race as a category has been considered in relation to black families, but white families have not been seen or named as such, being the centred norm in the social sciences and the popular imagination (Chambers 2001; Frankenberg 1993; Kincheloe et al 1998). ‘Other’ families, once raced, are seen as exotic and worthy of study, whereas white families are ‘normal’ – just families (Yuval-Davis 1997). Texts such as that of Dixon are premised on claims to truth which are actually historically and culturally limited and specific, but not acknowledged as being so. Instead they are decontextualised and presented to students as generalisable, universally applicable, objective and neutral treatises on ‘the family’. As Swigonski (1996) notes, privileges make people feel at home in the world and take for granted that they are the centre of their world where social, political, economic and other resources are available. Exclusion, on the other hand, de-centres or marginalises individuals who have less access to such resources. Moreover, those who are marginalised are commonly deprived of the discursive space to define themselves in their own terms and have, therefore, to subscribe to the definitions of themselves by those who are in power in order to survive. Creating such a discursive space can give both students and educators a context in which to focus upon possible approaches to human service professions with regard to family practices in South Africa. In having students conduct their own research from the perspective of race, gender and generation, the possibility exists for students and educators to develop a more reflexive account of family relationships in South Africa and for students to resist the positionings made available to them in dominant discourses (Pease 2002; Pease & Fook 1999; White 1995, 2000; White & Epston 1990). This process creates spaces for students to think critically in relation to their own families. These opportunities could be regarded as what Foucault (1988: 155) termed the ‘exercise of freedom’: thinking critically or in opposition, questioning the way in which they view their circumstances and developing the possibilities of oppositional or alternative counter-hegemonic discourses. This exercise of freedom promotes ‘reflective indocility’ by providing the means to unmask assumptions in ‘expert discourses’, and thus resist them (Dahlberg et al 1999: 79). This Foucauldian approach has also been utilised by theorists and practitioners, particularly in Australia and New Zealand. For example, Michael White (1995: 2000) and David Epston (1990) and their colleagues, including feminist narrative therapists such as Shona Russell and Maggie Carey (2003), who are all attached to the Dulwich Family Therapy

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Students could be encouraged to conduct research on their own-family practices and lives in South Africa through the lenses of race, gender and generation.

Centre in Adelaide; Charles Waldegrave (1990) and his colleagues (Waldegrave et al. 2003) of the Family Centre in New Zealand; and Rich Vodde and Paul Gallant (2002) all make use of Foucault’s ideas to practise as family therapists and educators. Their critiques of humanist and functionalist approaches to family therapy, which tend to locate the source of people’s problems internally, as personal failure, or within ‘dysfunctional’ or ‘pathological’ family relationships, resonate with the analysis of the Dixon text above. Narrative family therapists advocate that people be assisted to reconceptualise their problems through externalising them and seeing them as local significations of the larger socio-political and cultural arena, rather than perceiving ‘the problem’ as situated within themselves. In this way people should be able to resist dominant conceptions of their problems and claim power through a redefinition of themselves. In addition to externalising their problems, people are encouraged to interrogate and challenge the authority of dominant discourses. The term ‘externalisation’ constitutes the opposite of what is embodied in Foucault’s (1977a) idea of interiorisation, which has to do with the manner in which people become docile subjects, submitting to dominant discourses and internalising them.

Conclusion By analysing texts on ‘the family’, recognising relations of power and encouraging students to view aspects of their particular family situations through the lenses of gender, race and generation, students could be encouraged to externalise the sources of problems and, in so

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doing, to develop a critique of what is regarded as natural, normal and taken for granted in conventional texts on ‘the family’. Students could be given opportunities to reflect on and to consider both the impact of the local socio-political context, and their agency in relation to this context, and so to generate alternative stories that could be useful for other students and for the curriculum on family studies. This kind of criticism or critical engagement was regarded by Foucault as important for self-change who saw the possibilities for engaging in critical thought as one of the few paths to what he termed ‘care of the self’ where one is able to think in a different way and be less governed by disciplinary power: A matter of flushing out ... thought and trying to change it: to show that things are not as self-evident as one believed, to see that that which is accepted as self-evident will no longer be accepted as such. Practising criticism is a matter of making facile gestures difficult ... as soon as one no longer thinks things as one formerly thought them, transformation becomes very urgent, very difficult and quite possible (Foucault 1988: 155).

Endnotes 1 The’psy’ professions include human service professionals such as social work, psychology and psychiatry. 2 The use of systems theory, particulary in relation to assessment and intervention with families, but also in other contexts, is taken as a given and is deeply entrenched in the ‘psy’ professions in South Africa. This is evident, for instance, in social work in South Africa (South African Qualifications Authority: (Bachelor of Social Work) Exit Level Outcomes 2003) and internationally (Global Qualifying Standards for Social Work Education and Training 2002); it is also becoming more widely adopted in psychological discourse (see Bozalek 1997 for a more in-depth discussion of how systems theory has impacted on psychology texts). A text commonly presented as a foundational text to social work students at all South African tertiary institutions is Compton and Galaway’s (1989) Social Work Processes, which uses only systems theory, although it is not explicit about doing so. Compton and Galaway (1989: 112) define a system thus: ‘a system is usually thought of as a whole consisting of interdependent and interacting parts’. The efficacy of systems theory is unexamined and presented as self-evident in and for social work. 3 For more extensive discussion of the impact of interactional models of family therapy derived from systems theory in the field of domestic violence, see Foreman and Dallos (1993). 4 ‘Familism’ and ‘familiarism’ are terms sometimes used interchageably to denote the idea that ‘the family’ is the standard against which other forms of social organisation are measured. Forms not conforming to the universal, nuclear family form and the domestic relations underpinning this form would be considered deviant. For example, it would regard ‘the family’ as the natural place of support and care, assuming women’s primary responsibility to be in the domestic realm, as caregiver and men’s prinary contribution to be in the public sphere, contributing to production and earning a family wage.

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Chapter 11

Men and masculinities: Psychology and politics Kopano Ratele

Introduction Black people under the Smuts government were oppressed but they were still men (Biko 1996 :28, emphasis mine). In this chapter we examine the questions of men and masculinities. This examination is undertaken by both referring to and questioning Steve Biko’s psychologically insightful political thought on black people as expressed in his 1971 article, ‘We blacks’. One of the things done in the chapter is to question Biko about what in ‘We blacks’ he said black people were or were not, and could or could not do, in the 1970s. Seeing as he universalises his black subject – for instance when he states: ‘Whereas the Westerner is geared to use a problem-solving approach following very trenchant analyses, our (African cultural) approach is that of situation-experiencing’ (Biko 1978/1996: 43) – our examination has to extend into the past and forwards into current political affairs. However, regarding Biko’s universalising move, it is important to be clear that we diverge from the argument that all universalising is to be shunned. Universalisation is not necessarily essentialisation, just as particularisation is neither always progressive nor denaturalising. What a black person ought to strive for ultimately is a critical self-consciousness (see Fanon 1952/1967: 186). In addition to questions on black men and women’s identities, there is also a need to put to Biko questions about what he said or did not say about black sexuality and gender orders. In this last respect, Nkiru Nzegwu’s thinking on the struggle of black women is introduced into the discussion in order to broaden the scope of the dialogue on blacks, men and women. Her article which appeared in Jenda, at first sight appears to be based on globalisation. However, the focus is on the struggle of black women (Nzegwu 2001).

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Psychologies of men While, in South African psychology, research into men remains relatively marginal (but see e.g., Harris, Lea & Foster 1995; Luyt & Foster 2001), the psychological study into men, following on the heels of wider research tradition around women and gender, has long passed the childhood stage. Psychology is indeed one of the disciplines which has heartily embraced this field of studies. As one of the candidates vying for presidency of the Society for Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity (SPSMM) in 2001, Corey Habben said while in the early years of the Society the main question was whether a focus on men could be sustained, even at that point, barely six years since the birth of SPSMM, developments had outrun such concerns to expansion (Habben 2001). By 2006, Division 51 of the American Psychological Association (APA) aimed through its journal at ‘advancing knowledge in the new psychology of men through research, education, training, public policy, and improved clinical services for men’ (see Society for Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity 2005a). This is the position of a mature eleven-year-old. Of key significance for this volume on gender and psychology is that SPSMM has as one of its goals the promotion of research into how gender shapes lives and relationships of men, and how the Society is indebted in its studies of men and masculinity to feminist informed thought. In addition SPSMM ‘commits itself to the support of groups such as women, gays, lesbians and peoples of color that have been uniquely oppressed by the gender/class/race system’ (Ibid). The Society seeks to foster change around the constricting traditional understandings of masculinity which inhibit men’s full development and their capacity to form meaningful relationships with others. SPSMM also ‘provides a forum for members to discuss the critical issues facing men of all races, classes, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and nationalities’, one of the fora being the Bulletin (see www.apa.org/divisions/div51/Newsletter and the journal Psychology of Men and Masculinity (PMM)). PMM claims to be ‘among the world’s first scholarly publications devoted to the dissemination of research, theory, and clinical scholarship that advances the discipline of the psychology of men and masculinity’, the discipline defined as ‘how men’s psychology is influenced and shaped by gender and by the process of masculinization in both its socially constructed and biological forms’. It seeks to advance ‘understanding of men’s psychology, across the life span, across racial and ethnic groups, and across time’ (Society for Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity, 2005b). An indication of the huge interest in men or fashionableness of masculinity is that PMM is reported to be one of the most accessed journals published under the auspices of the APA. Also, as an indication of its maturity, PMM moved from two issues to the current four times a year.

Psycho-political recapturing The writings of both the politically informed psychologist Noel Chabani Manganyi and the psychologically-minded political leader were published in the 1970s (Biko 1978; Manganyi 1973, 1979). However, it is especially in the succeeding decade that we see psychology being increasingly infused with a self-conscious political criticality (e.g., Dawes 1985; Foster 1985; Ivey 1985; Perkel 1988). A small aspect of this critical political psychology is what might be termed psycho-political recapturing (see e.g. Anonymous 1986; Manganyi 1981). Reframing these South African psychological studies in this way follows on some of the work of such thinkers as the former Beninois government minister and philosopher, Paulin Hountodji, the African-American legal theorist, Patricia J Williams, and Biko himself.

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A real new man: between the devil inside and the bloody hard place Here is an undeniable fact: African men (and surely African women), because of their geopolitical location, are part of a world that is subject to unrelenting, unfair economic and trade policies, poverty, racism, and ethnic wars, as a few instances of transnational and national capital power. In the face of the force of this power, there are good grounds to enjoin African men (and women) to stand united so as to be able to mobilise against and effectively challenge that power and its effects. And here is the question that awaits that fact: is possible to strike a path between capital’s power (or ethnic tension, racism, or hunger) and gendered subversion; between, if you will, fighting the factory owner, induna, or racist ‘like a real man’, on one side, and being ‘a new man’, on the other? In one way, can new masculinities be anything other than pacific? Another way of putting the question underlying this paper is, how might we conceive of African males and masculinities if we do not imagine them as soldiers, or poor, or victims of ethnic wars or racist violence or structural adjustment programmes? So, then, in a third way still, what this paper seeks to underscore is the existence, in spite of the local ruling masculinity regime, of possibilities for a united critical front of women and men in the struggles against such local and global inequalities and forces as intimated above?

Williams, in common with other black critical thinkers, has said that, since much of the lives of black people has tended to be disregarded by history, she would come to see her own scholarly quest as to recapture some lost or neglected aspects of these lives as well as to highlight those elements that have made it possible for them to escape examination: I like so many blacks, have been trying to pin myself down in history, place myself in the stream of time as significant, evolved, present in the past, continuing into the future. To be without documentation is too unsustaining, too spontaneously ahistorical, too dangerously malleable in the hands of those who would rewrite not merely the past but my future as well (Williams 1988). A place in the world, history, rootedness, culture and being are some of the elements that this telling seeks to address. This same set of ideas was also evident in Biko’s work, for instance at the 1975–1976 trial of the South African Students’ Organisation/Black People’s Convention (SASO/BPC). On this occasion as one of 13 Black Consciousness Movement leaders charged under the Terrorism Act, Biko said giving evidence a month before the Soweto uprising of May 1976: What we are saying now is that at the present moment we have a culture here which is a European culture. This country looks, My Lord, like a province of Europe. It has got no relationship rootwise to the fact that it happens to exist in Africa, and when Mnr Pik Botha says at the United Nations ‘We are Africans’, he just doesn’t know what he is talking about (Biko 1978: 131). Psycho-political recapturing therefore is intended to convey the idea of re-examining and offering a different history of society, of understanding social and interpersonal relations and individual experience. Psycho-political recapturing consists of analogous elements to what is called rediscovery by political figures such as President Thabo Mbeki – with the vital addition that this type of rediscovery extends beyond historical macro-political and economic forces into psychological and cultural realms. And therefore, if there is a corresponding spirit of

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recapturing detectable in a project such as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) whose vision is to work for Africa’s revival, this other reclamation, again, seeks to infuse the vision of NEPAD with psychology. The psychological work referred to earlier, then, as these latter works, is graspable as arguing that weaved contemporaneous revitalisations, not just political or economic but also interlinked cultural and psychological re-storying (for it is with the help of information), are what needs to happen if there is going to be a sustained defence against and defiance of the unrelenting assault on black people’s lives by those who would write them out of historical and social agency in the first place. Reading this work, then, one observes a diffused consensus that a rehistoricisation and a retelling of other versions of the practices and relations of the oppressed is crucial if people wish to recentre the worlds in which they participate. Another object in this chapter is to further this quest – the social, economic, cultural, political and psychic recapturing of our histories, cultures and experiences – and to proceed, heedlessly for a moment, to examine life as we may have known it. This aim is closely linked to still another aim of mine: that in the face of ongoing and maybe even heightened xenophobia, racism, sexism, ethnic hatred, cultural prejudice and other forms of discrimination and global and local inequalities, there is little doubt that the need to keep challenging these ideological, structural, political and interpersonal practices persists. As a matter of fact, this call for the oppressed to fight and to organise themselves is neither novel nor mine. Many statesmen, intellectuals and activists around the word, on this continent, and in this country, have made similar calls over the years: the people have to mobilise and struggle against injustice.

Testing and rehearsing identities Having said what is said above, it is no great exaggeration to claim that more than a few recovery projects concerning history, culture and identity tend to follow the form of praise poems. Romancing history, or what is referred to below as monumentalising the past, tends to be accorded a special place in the development of society and culture. Indeed several memorialisation projects are currently underway around South Africa, ranging from commemorating people and deeds, rewriting history and memorial lectures, to erecting statutues. But if monumentalisation and memorialisation are the only games in town, then this chapter is not needed. On the other hand, an auto-critical black-conscious project is a guard against hagiography. Where monumentalisation seduces us into going back to the past to simply romance it, what is here referred to as auto-critical black-conscious psycho-politics considers the article ‘We blacks’ as a tool and product of a world that the BC leader calls up in his construction of his man, his own identity, and his world. Auto-critical black-conscious psycho-politics, here targeted at sexual and gendered practices and relations, shows that the racial, gendered, cultural and sexual worlds that Biko affirms or denies, alludes to or bypasses in the article – the African man that he is constructing and attempting to mobilise, the African woman he is quiet about, as well as his own identity – are all emergent entities and far from complete. In fact, the man Biko talks to (the woman he does not talk to) and his own identity are shown to be in the very process of being built, tested, defended and rehearsed in the work. Hence, a set of questions further to the one posed earlier is: How useful is what

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Biko said? And what Black Consciousness (BC) thought applies to the present context and future of our society, as well as to the discipline of psychology, about three concerns – first, African masculinities, second, African men’s relations to each other, and third, African men’s relations to others, especially African women? UWC Robben Island Mayibuye Archives

The situation of Biko Before giving an overview of the ideas contained in ‘We blacks’, we need to place them, their writer and the BC movement in the context of contemporary South African life. That is to say we have to delineate the context of these elements before entering into discussion proper on black life, men and women. Perhaps most crucially this prior context-setting needs to be done to set the scene for the analysis of African masculinity and men. But context is also significant due to the fact that some of the ideas in the article and some from the BC movement might generate ambivalence in readers because of matters Biko and his movement glossed over, overlooked, or sidestepped. There have been many critics who have put their minds to this or that other part of Biko and his comrades’ ideas of course. But relative to the ideas which have received attention, for instance his Steve Biko (1947–1977), the overtly political ideas, there are aspects of Biko’s and acknowledged ‘father’ of Black Conciousness thought in South Africa BC thought that have received no attention at all. . The institutionalisation of Biko Biko is the acknowledged ‘father’ of BC thought in this country. He remains the guiding spirit of the politics, psychic development and cultural current of black self-love. His torture and subsequent murder in 1977 by the apartheid state security apparatus is taken as inspiration for an unshakeable self-belief and belief in the cause of black power. Even before, and especially following, his murder, Biko emerged as a rallying beacon in the struggle for social and political liberation in South Africa. Portrayed initially as an enemy of the state in the late 1970s, he rapidly became part of South African and global popular culture. His image, like that of Che Guevara, is printed on T-shirts worn not only at political rallies but also on those sold at fashionable boutiques. Picador Africa recently published a new edition of I Write What I Like and the book has been offered as a prize on a radio show. He is commemorated as being closely associated with the 16 June 1976 student uprising, and his words are widely quoted. He has been immortalised in popular history and culture worldwide: in film (Cry Freedom), in stone, in painting and music of diverse genres (such as that of Peter Gabriel and Jean Wyclef). A number of young black men in Gauteng Province recently established the Steve Biko Foundation to carry out various projects, and part of this initiative is an annual lecture series. The Institute for the Advancement of Journalism

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offers Steve Biko scholarships. The ongoing and burgeoning interest in Biko and his writing indicates the institutionalisation of his political thought and BC in general. Two senses of institutionalisation The process of institutionalisation, which can simply be taken to mean putting in or making into an institution, can be understood in two apparently opposite ways, negatively and positively; for apparently these senses are related. Clearly, institutions carry a negative implication. Reports, movies and documentaries have been produced about the appalling history of the callous treatment of ‘lunatics’ and leprosy sufferers at psychiatric and medical institutions. In South Africa, activists, journalists and researchers have been revealing the unacceptable conditions in which illegal Mozambican and Zimbabwean immigrants tend to be held at Lindela repatriation centre, a government institution whose purpose is to deal with this problem. But if there was terrible treatment of ‘lunatics’ at the hands of unfeeling experts, the institutionalisation of the mentally disturbed long ago ceased to be associated with inhuman treatment; and one reason the unacceptable conditions of illegal immigrants tend to get press coverage is precisely because of the rise of human rights culture-informed institutions. Objects and philosophies of movements that are institutionalised therefore do not only carry negative implication. Much of our personality development and our interpersonal relating happens in and is shaped by institutions: crèche, university, marriage, mosque. It is not the first sense of institutionalisation but rather this second civilised sense, conveying acceptability, sacredness, beneficence, that is of concern. This sense of institutionalisation is tied to what literary and religious scholars would call canonisation, and what public cultural theorists, historians, and heritage practitioners call memorialisation or monumentalisation. Examples of this second sense of institutionalisation include schooling and what books and theories are taught in classes, and the commissioning and erecting of statues in memory of certain influential figures or great deeds in the public square. However, it is exactly institutionalisation as a good thing that creates ambivalence, not just joy in seeing one’s heroes and heroines cast in bronze. Without doubt there are many positive aspects of having an institution such as a school, and much need to thank people such as Albert Luthuli, Lilian Ngoyi, Nelson Mandela, Miriam Makeba, Robert Sobukwe, Biko and others who fought for liberation. The purpose of this sanguine institutionalisation is thus to turn the deceased into a monument, metaphorically speaking, but also concretely. The statues of Biko in the Eastern Cape and Mandela in Gauteng are not dissimilar to making of saints, only in this case for their political actions. Monuments have the aim of fixing memory of objects or moments – and this fixing is what gives worry, since it can lead to the exclusion of certain views about these objects and moments. In other words, institutionlisation, the positive kind, not only if it is given the form of stone, is always in danger of narrowing alternatives. The institutionalisation of Biko and BC therefore urges us to be wary. Monumentalisation and memorialisation as conjoined instances of the process of institutionalisation of political figures and ways of thinking have serious pitfalls. They prod us to pay ever close attention to Biko and BC thinking. Such attention would also extend to the time in which Biko lived and came to produce his written work, roughly the late 1940s to the late 1970s. However, there is also a need to analyse Biko in relation to that period in order perhaps to better

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understand the present times. Last, the events above (as well as this chapter) which grow around Biko’s person and thought become especially significant if they are seen as part of a larger inspiration associable with the ideas of NEPAD and the African renaissance. Approaching black critically It is due to the fact that many black men (and black women) learned from Biko and regard him as important in their identity development that it is not just imperative to employ his thought but at once to engage critically with it. Indeed, this is what he encourages in his work. For that reason I see it as non-negotiable for us always to approach black masculinity, and more generally black identity, with critical tools. We cannot afford to let through ideas about black men and women, perhaps even more so if they come from respected black figures, without subjecting them to rigorous analytical tests. Critical black self-awareness means always approaching ourselves with scepticism. On a somewhat personal note, like many African men (and African women) I remain inspired by Biko’s analysis of the nature of our social and political condition. When I enter into dialogue with Biko’s man (and absent woman) I am also fully cognisant of, if you will, him writing on the run, the urgencies which were generated by apartheid and in the daily struggle against it. However, in considering some of his reflections about who black people are and why they are that way, I have to demur. Here is the rub: Biko’s understanding of the world is clearly critical of ‘non-white’ people while all the time he is deeply embedded in, in fact takes for granted, the love of black people. As such, if only he was outright reactionary, someone like a Milton Obote or Lucas Mangope, or showed undeniable misogyny for black women, it would be little trouble to dismiss him. However, the problem we face in reading Biko is that he was no doubt a radical thinker, a lover of and doer for black people. According to his contemporaries he was a committed, strong man, a charismatic and handson leader who felt deeply about the conditions of his people. Most of this can be easily read from his words, his articles revealing a strong heartbeat, an intense and always analytical engagement, and impassioned politicised judgement.

About ‘We blacks’ History of ‘We blacks’ The late 1971 SASO newsletter contained the article ‘We blacks’. In the early 1970s, the author had been presenting and writing articles around a number of issues related to black consciousness philosophy. The articles were written under the pseudonym Frank Talk. As he would say under cross-examination at his trial, Frank Talk was not Strini Moodley, as the prosecutor seemed to believe, but himself. The Frank Talk papers were part of the series I Write What I Like that Biko was writing and putting out as publications man of SASO. An important point to note is that, several years prior to writing the series, the author and his comrades had split from the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), and in July of 1969 he became the first president of the new organisation, SASO. When ‘We blacks’ appeared, SASO was actively mobilising black tertiary students and recruiting new members. As the SASO publicity secretary at that time, Biko was at the forefront of articulating the political philosophy underlying the organisation.

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Reading the leader: mutual homosocial orgasms It not unreasonable to hold that, in the last several years when an African man of a certain age comes to read Biko, he is likely to have heard or read or seen the name Biko, that is, in some sense is readied to the historical situation about to be theorised. The reading man will find himself receptive to consciousness-raising talk about the black man, that subject Biko is about to describe with such charismatic force. In fact many would say the two men (Biko and his reader) know the situation. The reader and the writer thus assume what Manganyi (1973) called a mutuality of orgasms. But I would like to contend that it is as likely that the reader does not share a way of seeing and feeling with Biko. One can know a situation without seeing it clearly – where knowing means experiencing; one can see things without having experienced them. Where does the presumption that the unconscientised man shares something with the activist arise from? Experience. What is being privileged here is the collective lived experience of a people. The assumption of shared orgasms therefore comes from both sides, from both the side of Biko and that of his would-be reader, if only because those readers Biko seemed to have in mind also believed they knew him before they actually met him, knew him even though they would never meet him, knew him because they and him were black. The black man under apartheid is thus always ready to some extent to be conscientised. Biko is about to work the reader into an overt rage at the system, even towards revolutionary war, a point that is easy to support since many a young man from the ranks of the Black Consciousness Movement did go into exile after the 1976 Soweto insurrection to be trained as guerillas in Umkhonto we Sizwe and the Azanian People’s Liberation Army/POQO, the armed wings of the African National Congress and Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania respectively. This is how Biko is imaginable as he goes to sit down, about to think further what to say to his readers and audience (for his is an ongoing project). This is the picture in mind – of an evening or morning in September, about to put pen to paper, set to write up yet another piece on what to do to move forward the liberation struggle. It is crucial to keep in mind that in this article especially, as the title indicates, Biko is speaking to blacks, more especially black students, as one of their own. He is a black young man writing for and to young black people about blackness in the 1970s. This is the imaginative position from which he can be comprehensively analysed. Despite the comment about experience above, and the no doubt availability of other positions from which he can be read, it is this radical black position that I believe ought to be privileged in reading Biko. An example might be of help here. If a Catholic lesbian in the middle of reading Biko in 2000-something were to dismiss him by saying ‘this is about straight black men and therefore I can’t say much about it’ or the like, he or she may be correct, but only in a limiting way. In another way, and what I believe is a more significant way, and even though I will talk about both heterosexuality and masculinity, focusing too hard on the straightness and maleness of Biko would be missing the vital point. It is clear from this and other pieces in I Write What I Like, that being Catholic lesbian or of a different time are some of the positions that might be seen as ruling out some readers from Biko’s audience-in-mind. This felt alienation from the work is not only simply racial, sexual, gendered, or historical. It is very possible that a few black males in 1971 also misapprehended Biko. Irrespective of our identities, practices, places, and time, it is always possible to misread others, since it is in the nature of speaking to be misheard and misinterpreted. The same applies to writing and all other forms of dialogue. Indeterminacy, unfixity, polyvocality and difference are some of the aspects of writing and dialogue that always generate misapprehension, as poststructuralist and post-colonial thought have shown. Dialogue, conversation and writing, contrary to popular opinion, are fraught business. Even if it may be said that this is a case of the hopelessness of dialogue over historical periods, social divides, gender lines, and cultural distances, the alienation experienced by a transsexual reader and black reader, Biko is not a difference of orders but of degree. We should all be cautious then in how we interpret others over time and distance.

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Style of ‘We blacks’ Given these constraints and objectives, ‘We blacks’ is a short piece, 12 paragraphs in all, most of which are less than half a page. It is bold, both a plea – an impassioned one – and an agitation between lovers. The style is thus an effectively powerful oratorical one. ‘Material want is bad enough, but coupled with spiritual poverty it kills’ (28). ‘What makes the black man fail to tick? Is he convinced of his own accord of his inabilities?’ (28). ‘Deprived of spiritual content, the black people read the Bible with a gullibility that is shocking’ (31). A black person’s life under apartheid Biko opens with the assertion that, for anybody born during the apartheid régime, all aspects of life were inevitably affected by the Afrikaner Nationalist policy of separate development. He notes that the might of apartheid was largely employed to determine especially black people’s behaviours and thoughts. The apparatuses of the system were directed at determining where one could and could not live, the possible friendships one could entertain, the loves one had and missed, whom one could or could not marry, the extent and quality of education one received, even the possible ideas, motivation, will, aspirations, indeed one’s total self. It is important to keep in mind that at the end of these opening remarks Biko reveals that he managed to disentangle himself from some of the determinations of the government. ‘The basics’ of struggle The next part of the article tackles ‘the problem’ in South Africa. This it does in four paragraphs. Here he will, on the one hand, dismiss other organisations fighting against apartheid as having misdiagnosed the problem and, on the other, as working from an oversimplified understanding. The ideology of racial separation on its own was evil, Biko maintains. Because of its importance and apparent contradiction within the context of the ideas of BC specifically, and racial thinking in general, let me repeat what Biko said here: the separation of races in practice and in thinking about the world is in itself retrogressive if not downright degenerate. Biko goes on to argue that when coupled with supremacist ideas, capitalism and oppression this creates a condition of social and economic depression for the oppressed. Notwithstanding, he states, this is not the worst of it: the poverty of souls generated by, or spinning off from, apartheid is most devastating because it dehumanises. Spiritual poverty turns the black person into a shell, a shadow, a sheep, an ox, an animal, a slave. If I am allowed: the death of the psyche leaves a form of human, a human only in form, a spiritless machine. Culture, religion, and history The latter half of the paper is taken up with a discussion that weaves together the interlocking ideas of culture, history and religion. Biko shows the use of these discursive practices for those engaged on both sides of the power divide. In respect of the recorded past, he says the African child learns self-hate from school because of the negative image of African society in history. He proposes: ‘Part of the approach envisaged in bringing about “black consciousness”’ has to be directed to the past, to seek to rewrite the history of the black man’,

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delivering that is a truism of anti-colonial and national revolutions and cultural and ethnic struggles: ‘a people without a history is like a vehicle without an engine’ (29). His reasoning is that such a people cannot be roused to revolution against their oppressor because they live in the shadow of the oppressor, even celebrating their defeat at his hands. Regarding culture, Biko refers to the ease with which Africans communicate with each other as a deeply ingrained character trait. It is important to note that later on, however, he will warn that we should be careful not to lose this and other indigenous cultural virtues such as the oneness of community that lies at the heart of African culture. He uses the example of Indians who confound white hospital officials by bringing gifts for strangers as a ‘manifestation of the interrelationship between man and man in the black world as opposed to the highly impersonal world’ (30) in which white people live. Biko maintains that Christianity is a white man’s religion which was erected on rotten foundations. The reason young black women and men leave the church is precisely this: there is no message for black people in Christianity. Those who believe in it, he contends, are gullible because they already have no spiritual content. A Christian God who allows people to suffer under an immoral system is a contradiction in terms. The only religious message fit for the oppressed is that contained in black theology: an attempt to redefine and adapt the message in the Bible and make it relevant to the revolution. Even while basing itself on Christ’s precepts, black theology takes cultural context seriously. It is an attempt to show that the Bible resonates with the black people in their ‘long journey towards realisation of the self’ (31). And therefore black theology sees Jesus – who accepts ancestor worship – as being on the side of the struggle for freedom. BC discourse Last we have the principal and driving idea that characterises ‘We blacks’ specifically and Biko’s writing generally. That idea is naturally BC philosophy. BC is the source of Biko’s inspiration. BC is a methodology, a liberation project, and an output; but it is also a set of values to live by and a truth (see Biko 1996: 48–53). It is from this understanding of what is meant by BC that Biko says what he says to black people about their situation. Not just once, but at several points in the piece Biko defines and outlines, intimates and tells us what the political philosophy of BC means to him and SASO, what it is all about, and what it seeks to do for the oppressed. An inward-looking process, the intention of BC is ‘to make the black man come to himself’. This reawakening occurs when a life of pride and dignity is pumped back into the shell black males have become. This is a philosophy of everyday life that reminds black men of their complicity with racism. The aim of BC philosophy is to show the value of their own standards and worldview to black people themselves. On behalf of BC organs, Biko urges black people to use BC standards – not those of white society – to judge themselves. Black people are given a positive view of their situation. Although hating white people may be comprehensible, Biko states that this is not what BC is about. Biko sees hate as heedless, short-term, and unproductive for both black and white alike. What is sought, he says, is a meaningful and directed channel to the pent-up anger of the forces in the oppressed. The desire of a BC philosophy is to make people of one mind, and involve the masses in a struggle that they must come to feel is theirs. The principal reason BC makes sense, in Biko’s view, is that it speaks the language of the black man in every sphere of life.

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Men and their times The desire to revisit Biko arises out of another, bigger desire to understand how an identifying political and psychosocial position leads into what one says about the world, about himself, and about others. For somebody who professes, but is often disappointed with much of psychology, one of the questions I have been asking of myself and of others tend to come down to this: what does this (whatever this is – act, attitude, disorder, emotion, IQ test score, relationship and other subjects on which psychologists are experts) have to do with economic, cultural and political positions? Simultaneously there is also disillusionment whose origins are to be found in the workings of the state. Here psychology helps to formulate questions about the stories individuals, in particular but not exclusively bearers of political office, tell or do not tell about the world, about themselves, about us, about how they make sense of their own and other’s actions, lives and relationships. Yet the line between what we say on the one hand and our position in society on the other is never straight. One does not have to be a white person to have a problem with a black politician; one does not have to be a white upper-middle-class South African to say something like, ‘I can’t really say for BC’; it is fallacious to claim that ‘as a black man I can tell you what black men think’. So what does Biko’s BC position hold for others (for black women and other men)? On first mentioning the words black man Biko sounds as if he is only referring to himself, or a single man he has in mind. At this moment it would be wrong to read him as talking about black men as a group or black people as a whole. It is at the second point when he uses the phrase again that we sense that perhaps the first reading was indeed wrong, that it was incomplete, incorrect. The sentence says: ‘What makes the black man fail to tick?’ But it is because the question follows from a reference to ‘black people’ that we are alerted to the slippage between the one black and the group of black men, and from the black man to the black race. And in the paragraph where he will ask this question, Biko will mention the phrase ‘black man’ three times in all, the term ‘man’ twice, in addition to the masculine form used here and throughout the article. It is important to take note of the fact that Biko sees blackness as a politics and a psychic attitude at the same time. Blackness is both a value and a view on the world. Yet, while he holds this view, of blackness as not only personal identity but a social identity, Biko is addressing himself not to blacks, but principally to black males. Even with that single move, he puts black males at the head of the march to liberation. Simply, this is what putting black males at the centre of black liberation means: it means all of what is black will become positive and all black people will be able to face up to their oppressor when black males have learned to act like men. African culture, the black world, black men and women will be enabled to rise up against white racism (by which he means the white male ‘gig’), when black men’s bodies are pumped with new BC life. This is easy to see though, and has been written about extensively by Biko’s comrades such as Malusi and Thoko Mpumlwana (1996). Writing in an introduction to an edition of Biko’s work, the two have said that although they shared a passion for black freedom, they have come to recognise the gender bias in Biko’s work:

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The struggle to re-order the attitudes and relationships of women themselves, between women and men, and the socio-cultural and economic milieu of our existence is as fundamental as the struggle ever was for the re-ordering of race relations for blacks in South Africa and the world (Mpumlwana & Mpumlwana 1996: xiii). The Mpumlwanas also state that they have since realised that the experience of being excluded and regarded as non-persons because of gender is as painful as being excluded and regarded as nothing because of one’s skin colour. It must be said, though, these comrades of Biko have also trod cautiously in their efforts to answer for their comrade. They explain away Biko’s practices, rather than making us understand them. For instance, in spite of their views expressed above, they have argued that the masculinisation of blackness and gender bias in Biko’s work must be seen in the context of his historical period. This sounds like an attempt to protect or excuse him. The historical conditions that these authors have deployed as reason for Biko’s ungendered politics are themselves important to try to decipher. Behind their one-line explanation lurks a deterministic and unidirectional notion of individual/social relations. To say ‘Biko was a product of his time’ does not shield, contextualise, nor help in making him more relevant to our times. The relations of men and women to their discursive materials, that is, their cultural, political and economic climate, is complex. To claim that somebody is ‘of his or her time’ is therefore of little use when one wants to understand the times that produced the person and shaped his or her life and her work. More importantly though, the attempt to use his time, the 1970s, to cover Biko’s back from a thoroughgoing analysis on this particular point does his work harm rather than good. I believe such efforts calcify the passion that was present during a life, making it inflexible, brittle, out of date. More than merely rendering black struggle male and ungendered, a problem that characterises many national revolutions up to today, Biko becomes parochial, irrelevant and dead as far as contemporary conditions are concerned. The truth is Biko was in many ways not of his time. Indeed, the connection of self and time, or self as time, is one that should not be taken for granted. We have noted that, at the end of his opening remarks, Biko declares that he was able to be something other than what the government intended him and other black people to be. He stood up against the racial order that was put in place. This challenging attitude was not only directed at the establishment, and cannot but have been part of the same understanding, positioning or, if you will, energy that enabled him to challenge other things. That attitude informed Biko’s lead in the walkout from NUSAS, which was recognised as the union representative of all students in the country at that time. This can be read in his ‘Letter to SRC presidents’ where he rejects the black media. Where he also speaks about the black political leaders, which included the leaders of the African National Congress, the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania, and the South African Communist Party, people like Oliver Reginald Tambo, Mandela and Robert Sobukwe, Biko’s tone is brusque, showing very little respect for them, and not even caring to call them by their names (27). If anything, this is not a very good product of his time.

Blackness and the loss of manhood What then are some of the hidden or silent parts of Biko’s anti-racist rhetoric? If anyone had doubts about the extent of his masculine politics, the skid marks we gestured to earlier,

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from males to blacks, and from black men to human beings, are ineluctable in that line quoted in opening this chapter: Black people under the Smuts government were oppressed but they were still men (1996: 28). There has always been a silence around the masculinist disposition in anti-colonial, antiracist and democratic revolution politics. Some have explained the silence by saying that the nature of the rhetorical political subject of the BC project was determined by the nature of apartheid. Others have said it was necessary for men and women to stand united in the face of colonialism, racism and apartheid, and that the plan was that the sex/gender question would be settled after the national racial struggle was won. A more revealing view has been that males are naturally more politically conscious that females, and that anyway the struggle against sex/gender oppression was secondary to the racial struggle. Given how far we have travelled, it is now easy to see that the view that females are naturally less politically aware than males is patently retrogressive; as is the view that the struggle against sex/gender oppression was not as important as the racial struggle. But it is equally important to recognise that the argument that the sex/gender of the rhetorical political subject of the BC project was determined by the nature of apartheid was duplicitous. The irony of course is that patriarchal and sexist assumptions underpinned both the laws of apartheid and the struggles against those laws. It must be indicated that these assumptions are not limited to BC thought and Biko’s project. Numerous gender-conscious writers have articulated the same: that within the national project in South Africa, any analysis of the oppression or exclusion of black women tended to be in respect to their race, and not their sexuality or gender or class. One can also recognise similar sorts of insularity within nationalist revolutions and cultural movements in other parts of the world. What seems to trouble Biko most in this paper is loss of black manhood. The intimation in the statement about when our uncles and fathers were men, during Jan Smuts’ time, is that the recovery of black masculinity, of a type of maleness, in contradistinction, for instance, to the recovery of the psychic and embodied integrity of all oppressed humans, or a strong black womanhood, or some kind of femininity, is what will lead to the freedom of the race. To put it simply, a crucial requirement for racial emancipation is the restoration of the soul and self-esteem of black males. Here lies the essence of the inward-looking process of BC – to look inside the mind or person of the black male. The surprising thing in the assumptions contained in ‘We blacks’ is that they reveal as much as they conceal about the identities of males and their practice. I shall not repeat the comments I have made about the effacement of ambiguities of masculinity and race in Biko’s project, which, as I indicated, one can read right from the start in the use of the exhortative and repeated singular, black man. But while he provokes the black man to come to himself, we are not quite sure, except in relation to a lack of freedom, where the black male got lost, or where he should go. When he sets out to inspire black men to rescue themselves, do we really know what it is they must rescue (about themselves), except for the pride eroded by a racist political and social structure? The irony of this loss and recovery mission is that one will find some would agree that Biko’s man (if not the activist himself), may need rescuing still, trying to find his path, away from wherever he was supposed be, even though the formal system of racist apartheid collapsed almost seven years ago.

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If Biko knew his man, what readers are left with are hints at, rather than a spelling out of, the type of man he has in mind, who will fight for freedom and come to fruition when liberation is won. What stays is something that reads like a magical process: slave + BC ➯ political struggle ➯ political freedom = real black man. Now this is magic; it cannot be real. When one is concerned with the politics of everyday society, life, as people say, is complicated; there cannot but be many issues that pass through one’s mind which remain unanswered by this formulaic process. For instance, some of the quotidian questions that one might ask when looking at who Biko’s real men are: could he be androgynous in appearance, or does he have to be all muscular and strong? Can he be a good ballet dancer and homosexual at the same time, or are only potential and actual straight by-the-book family men allowed? Does he read the Qur’an yet indulge in a little masochism? Is it absolutely important that he be monogamous, and ought it matter to him if others like watching pornography? What does he think of Thandie Newton and Alek Wek – are they both beautiful Africans, or does he think black African women should be a little fuller of shape? What is his view on lesbian marriages? Where does he live? Can he be filthy rich in the new South Africa? Should he like any of Sandiwe Magona’s writing? All right, let’s say he is a big 30-something heterosexual male who likes soccer and lives in Alexandra, Gauteng Province. Is it alright if he prefers The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Stranger over Things Fall Apart and the poetry of Mazizi Kunene, Gunter Grass, Sylvia Plath and JM Coetzee over Zakes Mda, Noni Jabavu, Soyinka, and Ama Ata Aidoo; opera rather than jazz and kwaito; penne arrabiata instead of samp, spinach and tripe? And while we are on food, what is his favourite dessert, his favourite restaurant in London? We can go on and on in this way to show how many things we do not know about this masculinity of African men we are given. We will never know Biko’s answers to many of these questions because he didn’t write about them. But does that mean he thought them unimportant, or did he take it for granted that we all knew and agreed on what is a black person, a man, a woman? I do not believe that he thought them unimportant at all. We have noted that when he begins the article, he refers to the fact that apartheid segregation touched every aspect of black people’s lives, from their intimate personal relationships, thoughts, and feelings, to their education, careers and social mobility. A few months after Biko wrote the article, he married. As with many political leaders, this is not mentioned in his self-reflexive piece. But Biko might not have anticipated his marriage. Still one could ask: is there perhaps a chance that he believed that these matters are private and have nothing to do with his politics? Even if one concedes that the activist may not have known that he was to marry in space of a few months, this is obviously a contradiction since the fact that he saw apartheid as affecting all manner of things in black people’s lives, including people’s intimacies, shows nothing if not the imbrication of the private and public spheres. In addition, we must note that Biko, when he wishes, does confront the mundane and the private, such as workers riding home in a bus or a man in a toilet: In the privacy of his toilet his face twists in silent condemnation of White society but brightens up in sheepish obedience as he comes out hurrying in response to his master’s impatient call. In the home-bound bus or train he joins the chorus that roundly condemns the White man but is first to praise the government in the presence of the police or his employers (1996: 28).

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If Biko can lift the everyday experience of a bus or train ride to the level of the political, or see fit to publicise the anguish of a man in a lavatory, surely we can put to Biko and the BC programme the matters we have – who are black men when they are not out chanting against the white man – as well as why he didn’t give mind to the condition of (black) women.

On our own In addition to the vexed question of who we are at the centre of the criticism of ‘We blacks’, there is another related and equally difficult consideration. This is the matter of whether there is a possibility of using blackness or Africanness as epistemology and method here. Let me say a few things on this possibility. It is particularly in reading the work of those one assumes share one’s view of the world, such as other African intellectuals, that one sees the terrifying comfort of racial identities. Nkiru Nzegwu (2001) raises this while speaking against what she sees as the smug ignorance of Euro-American intellectuals. The stories of people who regard Africa as a small village are well-known. For example, Kenyans may go to South Africa for lunch, leading to a Kenyan being asked whether they know such-and-such a student from South Africa. Nzegwu gives the example of professors who tell of tribes where women do this or men do that, using as their sources crude images of Africans on the Discovery Channel. She notes the fact that European-American academics characterise African female intellectuals as B-grade quality, lacking the material to be leaders in studying even their own experiences, as they ‘function only at the level of group consciousness’ (Nzegwu 2001: 2). The trouble of course is old: in a more or less similar way to speaking, writing is less about finding things out or communicating, and more about founding grounds for authority and even dominating others or one’s self. But it is for white members of the sisterhood who do not want to give up their assumed positions of authority on Africa that she reserves her bite. Nzegwu says that for years white females helped in objectifying African women: The structures of the academy work to the advantage of White women by assigning them positions of authority and relegating us to the margins (Nzegwu 2001: 7). She then makes a move whose import is far-reaching. Whether or not with this move it is her intention to rend the assumed shared consciousness, I do not know. Be that as it may, she effectively lumps together white women with African men. These two groups, who, appearances suggest, share something with black women, are said to all be pulled up the academic ladder by white males, while the latter are kept at the bottom rung. She asserts that African women scholars must refuse to be juniors in work done on the lives and experiences of women in Africa. What Nzegwu is suggesting has two sides: first, African women’s (intellectual) struggles should continue separate from those of white women, and second, similarly, African women’s struggles should disengage from African men’s because the latter are increasingly being offered space in the academy, and are perhaps even colluding with whites. Hence, what Biko said for the black man in politics, Nzegwu posits for African women in the academy: go it alone. Should black men also continue believing they are on their own? What may the consequences of these separatist programmes be for the recovery or creation of African-centred knowledges?

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Are there no commonalities whatsoever between African men and African women, between white men and black men, between African women and white women? Regarding those groups who tended to have less political and social power historically, and thus have had their produce given less value, is there no chance of helping each other to understand our various struggles better even if there is no ‘us’? Is there no way to resolve the contradictions which in fact are there in my own words and in Nzegwu writing about Africa from the United States? There are other questions, which must reveal answers to the previous question. These are: why is there then such a pull to claim a commonality when one writes or speaks – saying we feel this or that, this is our heritage, we black men, this is how we black women do it, it comes down to us? Does the writer really know how his or her auditors feel, how a particular reader stands in relation to such and such a historical event, let alone what she or he inherits, how she or he would want to do whatever needs to be done, and whether indeed the person wants to be part of the assumed group? Obviously, not. One does not know. Rather, words are always intended to do something; they are infused with all kinds of motives, among them the motive for power. Thus when their author lays claim to unity, oneness, solidarity, in the best of circumstance he or she hopes that there is shared community of interests with those in his or her mind. The community might seem to arise out of a shared history, a feeling brought about by a certain legacy. Perhaps more appropriately though, one speaks or writes to cultivate a community, a way of looking at society and history. One writes not merely to say something about oneself, but to produce an ‘us’, African women of a certain bent, a black man of special type. Therefore, an object that I want to think I share with one or two others is to write about us, our condition, paying due regard to the efforts of both black and white, male or female, scholars and activists on the continent and in the diaspora who continue to struggle to reverse the distorting effects of all kinds of unfair discrimination. I seek everywhere I can find them those who are committed to radical liberation and social justice. These, if I may be forgiven, ‘are my people’. As I indicated elsewhere, I find the notion of historic responsibility intriguing. One of the things it suggests is that, in thinking about Biko specifically, and oppression and marginalisation generally, we are required not to restrict ourselves to the possibilities and

In love with a man A Muslim feminist student of mine recently came into my office to tell me of something she is in the process of writing. I am mentioning this not merely because she is doing something on Biko, but more importantly because of the words she used: terms such as recognition, forgiveness, love. She said the first time she read Biko she said, ‘wow’. She said she recognised the gender biases of the activist’s work but, she said, she easily forgave him. She said this is because she fell in love with the man. Well, I have been madly in love with Biko for a long time. This is something one does not say to scholars and in public: a real man does not declare his love for another, certainly not in front of other men, unless it is intended to be taken as a joke. Well, there is no other way to say it. I have loved the name Biko from the first moment I laid my eyes on his words. The kind of love I am talking of is not only political but that which is characterised by a great life-changing sense of loss at its birth: an Oedipal relation. Bell Hooks (1992) talks of this is in Black Looks, especially in her essay on love as politics, but more closely in her more recent work on the subject.

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limits of a race consciousness. With the benefit of history, such a response would imply that we are not to limit ourselves to thinking and working in separate organisations for black people and white people, or men and women. I want to believe that being concerned with Biko and BC from a gendered perspective is with that benefit. To both black men and black women then, and to all who are committed to social justice, history is telling us there is great, urgent, and new consciousness-raising work around a complex self and other that holds some of the keys to better gendered racial and cultural relations.

Conclusion I began by saying that, just as in the case of other groups which continue to be discriminated against or marginalised, for instance people living with HIV/Aids in this country, those who are poor, women, and people in rural areas of South Africa, there is strong argument to start or keep working at the various problems faced by black men. I ended up by showing that there are various difficulties faced by black women, some of which originate with white racism and capitalism, but others that can be laid at the door of the black patriarchy. Along the way I showed the troubles with masculine racial politics. At the centre of my critique is the question: who are we?. The aim has been to show the invidiousness of using the black man as a figure for the troubles faced by all black people – black women in particular. I managed to gesture to some of the unfortunate consequences to such figuring – the sort of knee-jerk reaction by some black women. My argument has been that it is important to look at black men as males, and not simply blacks, but also beings with different aspirations, needs, personalities, secrets, histories, connections. I argued against glossing over the differences among black males, among which I suggested differences of class, sexuality, what we value, education, our desires, tastes, and so on. It goes without saying that if it is agreed that intragroup differences exist among black males, there will be differences between black males and black females, but also among black females. The gesture towards intra-racial and inter-sex dissimilarities is also relevant to the fact that thwarting disagreement is not only confined to blacks but troubles any group which historical circumstance such as apartheid, cultural hegemony, or capitalism pushes together. So, the question is what should the grounds of unity be, seeing we are now officially free; in other words, what brings us together when no longer a slave race, nor slave men? So, when serious note has been taken of the ambiguities, silences, and elisions, which identity theorists have been discussing, many of the sentiments of BC about self continue to make very good and practical sense. The resurgence of racism is common worldwide as in our own country, and therefore we still need the psychological politics of BC. And thus, precisely because there are enduring possibilities for a more just and free society in a more self-critical BC, an involved but ever critical watch on its limitations, omissions, biases – and indeed injustices – is always necessary.

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T. Shefer

Chapter 12

Motherhood Lou-Marié Kruger

Introduction The topics of motherhood, mothering and mothers have always been of interest in the field of psychology. While the focus on motherhood in psychology was initially more instrumental in that mothers were seen as responsible for producing and reproducing healthy children, the focus has shifted quite dramatically in the last few decades to the mother as subject. While this shift has meant that more attention is being given to the subjective emotional and physical experiences of women who mother, all psychological research and clinical work with mothers is profoundly shaped by the fact that all women who mother and all psychologists who work with mothers have been exposed to powerful ideologies of motherhood that impact on their experiences of motherhood, mothering and mothers. It is in the context of these motherhood ideologies that women become mothers and psychologists work with and about mothers. Mothering, perhaps more than any role in society, has been invested with ideological meaning and cultural significance (Bassin et al 1994; Braverman 1989; Glenn 1994; Parker 1997). However, the meaning and significance attached to motherhood is not universal. In different contexts different sets of expectations and preconditions are associated with motherhood (Collins 1994). Large discourses have been constructed around all moments in the reproductive cycle of women, specifically around pregnancy, birth and the early postpartum period. This means that all women’s experiences of themselves and their bodies as mothers are mediated by their interactions with institutions and discourses. The role of mother has been discussed so much and so thoroughly circumscribed and defined that authors frequently refer to ‘the myth of motherhood’ (Braverman 1989: 244; Glenn 1994: 9) and ‘the fantasy of the perfect mother’ (Chodorow & Contratto 1982) to describe the

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expectations and requirements that are associated with the role of mothering. We can thus speak of motherhood as a culturally mediated experience, an experience that is profoundly shaped by culture and society. Adams (1994) argues that the more a woman is exposed to various institutions and their discourses, the denser the mediating screen becomes and the more the motherhood experience is mystified. Braverman (1989: 228), in a review of the anthropological and historical data on motherhood, shows how ‘mothering is a culturally determined role; that the objectives of mothering differ from generation to generation, and that social and economic realities significantly influence the expectations of motherhood’. However, Braverman (1989: 231) makes the very important observation that ‘(w)hat is noteworthy about the cross-cultural data is that, whatever the childcare arrangement, the people in the culture see their arrangement as natural, normal, and the right thing to do’ (my emphasis). It is precisely the fact that beliefs about motherhood appear to have their origins in nature, normality and morality (often religion) that leads to the powerful influence of such beliefs. If such beliefs are dominant in society they will have an impact on the way women experience mothering. It is often because of societal expectations that motherhood is such a stressful experience for women. Psychology, including some feminist psychologies, has played an important role in the perpetuation of the mothering ideologies. In effect along with the policy-makers, the educationists, the doctors – all the experts – psychology has constructed motherhood. It has contributed much to the attainment of totality and closure on the meaning of mothering. When writing about motherhood in South Africa it is important to understand the context within which women mother and within which psychologists write about motherhood. This chapter will therefore first briefly discuss the motherhood ideologies that have been identified by psychologists as ‘dominant discourses of motherhood’ or ideologies (see Adams 1994; Cosslett 1994; Marshall & Woollett 2000; Phoenix et al 1991; Riley 1983; Treichler 1990; Wall 2001). This will be followed by a discussion of the work that has been conducted on motherhood, mothering and mothers in South Africa. The goals of the current chapter are: to discuss some of the discourses of motherhood that have been considered to be dominant in Western psychology; ❍ to explore how such ideologies can shape, first women’s subjective experiences of being mothers and secondly their mothering practices; ❍ to show how different types of feminisms have different implications for our understanding of motherhood; ❍ to review the research that has already been conducted about motherhood in South Africa; and ❍ to discuss how South African psychologists doing research and clinical work with women can approach the topic of motherhood. ❍

Ideologies of motherhood The chapter will focus on four motherhood ideologies that have been prominent in explorations of motherhood in psychology (see Adams 1994; Cosslett 1994; Marshall & Woollett 2000; Phoenix et al. 1991; Treichler 1990; Wall 2001). It should be made

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clear from the outset that these ideologies are by no means monolithic, as each of the ideologies themselves are outcomes of specific historical developments. The main points of each ideology as it is communicated to and received by childbearing women will be highlighted. It should be emphasised, however, that one should guard against a conception of ideology that is ‘simply created and flung out over society like a big net’ (Treichler 1990: 118). It would indeed have been an interesting project to trace the history of each ideology, highlighting the complexities and subtleties of each. Four discourses of motherhood Mother as object: instrumental discourses ❍ Medical discourse ❍ Child development discourse Mother as subject: feminist discourses ❍ Rational feminism ❍ Romantic feminism Characteristics of all motherhood ideologies ❍ The claim of the universality of the motherhood experience ❍ The obscuring of the importance of race, class, ethnicity, religion, sexuality ❍ The hidden dimension of power (i.e. of the medical establishment, mother, the child, the developmental psychologists, the state, the middle class)

Motherhood objectified: the mother as patient and the self-sacrificing mother The first two motherhood discourses that have become prominent in psychology are discourses that to a large extent objectify mothers and motherhood: in these discourses mothering is regarded as instrumental in the production and reproduction of healthy children. The medical ideology and the mother as patient Much has been written in psychology about the medicalisation of the female body in general and the reproductive body specifically (Adams 1994; Bordo 1992; Martin 1989; Oakley 1979, 1984, 1993). Foucault (1973) discussed the emergence of a new medical discourse in Europe in the eighteenth century, a discourse that problematised disease as an economic and political problem for societies. As such, bodies became the focus of collective control measures: the surveillance, the monitoring and controlling of bodies became one of the important functions of state apparatuses (Lupton 1994). While the surveillance and controlling of bodies can be generalised to all areas of medicine, there is also something particular regarding the medical discourse of reproduction. Throughout Western medical and psychiatric history, the notion that the womb is ‘a dangerous, hazardous place’ persisted (Corea 1988: 252). In the late nineteenth century many ‘nervous disorders’ (paralysis, crying fits, insomnia, backaches and headaches) were connected to

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the womb. Hysteria, a term derived from the Greek word for uterus, was ‘a very common female trouble … a complaint intimately allied to the sexual organs of females’ (Gardner quoted by Corea 1988: 251). It has been well-documented how psychiatry’s response was to control ‘the wandering womb’ by ‘putting the womb back in its place’ (Williams & Casper 1998: 14). Of central importance here is the place that the womb (as symbol of the female reproductive cycle) was allocated in the medical discourse of the psychiatric diagnostic systems such as the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. The emotional impact of the reproductive body on women is described in terms of diagnostic categories such as ‘premenstrual dysphoric disorder’ and ‘major depressive disorder: with postpartum onset’ (see Brockington, 1999). In psychiatry it is accepted that fluctuations of gonadal steroids premenstrually, during pregnancy and postpartum and in the perimenopausal years, increase the risk of emotional disturbances in certain women (Williams & Casper 1998). The medical discourse constructs all reproductive moments (including pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period) as ‘a site for monitoring and intervening in the pursuit of the healthy delivery of a baby’ (Woollett & Marshall 1997: 186). If women’s bodies are machines that are expected to reproduce other machines, it fails to do so smoothly and consistently and necessitates surveillance and intervention (Davis-Floyd 1992). The institutionalisation of the medical discourse is particularly apparent when one looks at childbirth. In the medical discourse of childbirth, birth that is efficient, anaesthetised, pain-free and technological is presented as an ideal. In obstetrics and gynaecology textbooks the focus is on the foetus and physician, with the woman often still erased altogether. In medical dictionaries birth is typically defined as ‘an accomplishment of the fetus (and/or physician) rather than of the mother’ (Treichler 1990: 135). Within medical discourses the process of labour and delivery is typically broken up in stages and phases with a partogram being used to evaluate the progress of labour graphically at each stage (see for instance Ellis 1983; Furey & Aladjem 1980). Adams (1994) uses Foucault’s notion of an ‘anatomochronological schema of behaviour’ (Adams 1994: 52) in the military (a schema in which each step is broken down into a series of precise and minute components) to illuminate the medicalisation of birth. In a different context, Bordo (1992) cites Foucault to describe how the female body becomes a ‘docile’ body – a body that, through the organisation and regulation of time and space, is externally regulated, subjected and transformed. Separation (of mind and body, of stage from stage) becomes the fundamental tenet of the medical model (Davis-Floyd & Davis 1997). According to the principle of active management of labour, the maternal body and the process of labour undergo a reconceptualisation and a functional redesign according to a universal standard: ‘The massing and organisation of bodies demands that the individual body behave in precise synchrony with other bodies of its class’ (Adams 1994: 53). As such active management of labour is a practical expression of the profession’s conviction that unregulated childbearing leads to social chaos. Davis-Floyd (1992) provides a list of hospital birth rituals which, she says, are all aimed at controlling the unpredictable process of birth and at confirming the superiority of technology over nature: wheelchair, prep, being put to bed, fasting, intravenous feeding, pit drip, analgesia, amniotomy, external foetal monitoring, internal foetal monitoring, cervical checks, epidural anaesthesia, push/don’t push, transfer to delivery room, lithotomy position, sterile sheets, episiotomies, caesarean section, apgar score, washing the baby, etc. To the extent that emotions are discussed (and

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they are typically not discussed in standard obstetrics handbooks, see Oakley 1995) they are typically mentioned as something that should be controlled. Brockington (1999) lists what he calls the ‘disorders of birth’: unnoticed parturition, acts of desperation and rage, and confusional states. The medical discourse: separation of body and emotion In his history of the treatment of disorders of birth Brockington cites from the earliest medical textbooks, for instance (Osiander 1979 cited in Brockington 1999: 115–116): A woman, in labour with twins, tried to jump from a window and required two strong men to save her. Another doctor saw his patient, known to be in a state of melancholy, falling past the window, as he was ascending the stairs; mother and child died soon afterwards. A young woman who was seized with pains in the middle of the night, got up, dressed, walked 250 yards and threw herself in the river, where she drowned. Another woman tried to strangle herself with a girdle after three days in labour. Brockington’s historical accounts also include descriptions of the medical profession’s attempts to control these emotional states: She was angry most with her best friends, husband and mother, but she spake many things religiously. Her face and eyes were very red, with a sharp fever. Therefore I concluded it to be a true phrensie. I persuaded a vein to be opened, but it could not be, she was so unquiet … to bring her to rest, I gave her syrup of poppies. And I applied vinegar of roses to her head, but she still took it not, and rested not. January 12th I cut a hen into two parts, hot and bloody to be applied to the crown of her head; this done, a thick vapour flew up in abundance so that it might be seen, and when the hen was taken off, it seemed dry roasted; this did much good. For the 13th January she came to herself, and knew the attendants, and spoke rationally and was obedient (Plater 1602 cited in Brockington 1999: 201).

The implication of the medical discourse for women who are pregnant, giving birth or postpartum is that if they are rational and responsible they will hand their bodies to the experts to ensure that their baby is not at risk. Anthropologist Sheila Kitzinger (cited in Corea 1985: 250) states that within the medical discourse a woman typically feels that she is a mere container for the foetus, ‘that her body is an inconvenient barrier to easy access and the probing of all those rubber-gloved fingers and the gleaming equipment, and even – ridiculous, but we are talking about feelings – that if she were not around the pregnancy could progress with more efficiency’. In the medical discourse some of the core meanings and behavioural norms of Western society are reflected: the mind-body dualism, the need for control and fear of non-control, industrialised society’s preference for stability of affect and behaviour and the decontextualisation/individualisation of the individual’s emotional experience. Because stability is so highly valued, changeableness, rhythmicity and emotionality have come to be viewed as inherently pathological. These core meanings and behavioural norms are popularised by primary health-care workers, obstetricians and gynaecologists: as such it is an ideology that impacts on women and on psychologists working with women.

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The instrumental discourse: the self-sacrificing and all-giving mother Early psychological research about mothering was more concerned with children and their development than with the women who did the mothering. See for example Riley (1983) and Thurer (1994) for detailed historical expositions of how the work of behaviourists such as Watson and Skinner and psychoanalysts such as Klein, Winnicott, Bowlby and Kohut became the basis of a powerful motherhood ideology. As research on mothering was typically concerned with the relationship of particular child-rearing practices to the development of children (Riley 1983; Thurer 1994; Woollett & Phoenix 1991), it can be said that traditionally psychological research on mothering has been instrumental in focus in that it only looked at the instrumental value of mothering to society (Gerson et al 1984; Riley 1983; Woollett & Phoenix 1991). In the words of Gerson, Alpert and Richardson (1984: 435), mothering was viewed as ‘the production of adjusted and promising offspring’. This instrumentalist view was at the basis of another pervasive and very influential motherhood ideology in psychology, one in which women were expected to find fulfilment and satisfaction in the role of the ‘ever-bountiful, ever-giving, self-sacrificing mother’ (Bassin et al 1994: 2). This discourse has also been referred to as ‘the ideology of intensive mothering’ (Hays 1996) and the ideology of ‘essential motherhood’ (DiQuinzio 1999). The child-care experts with all their prescriptions for the child’s happiness created an ideal, a stereotype, whereby every woman alone in her nuclear household believes that she ought to be capable of giving all to her child so that it will grow and be happy. An essential ingredient for the child’s happiness is the mother’s own happiness which she is supposed to experience in response to the child’s response to her. Such constructions of ‘good-enough’ mothering or ‘good/normal’ mothering can be explicit or implicit, but they become the constructs against which mothers and society measure the adequacy of mothering (Phoenix & Woollet 1991). In Riley’s (1983: 85, 105) discussion of the popularisation of the work of prominent psychoanalytic developmental psychologists such as Klein, Winnicott and Bowlby, she highlights how this ideology of self-sacrificing and all-giving mothers was popularised: ‘Popularisation’ is an opaque notion. It is employed as if it offered an informative account of a process, but it actually explains nothing, and only acts as an ostensible redescription, without much content to it. For ‘popularisation’ doesn’t tell us anything about why a particular theory should at a particular moment lend itself to dilution, or to being broadcast to a wider audience: it assumes the essential purity of a theory which then, through no fault of its own, suffers a process of coarsening once the world gets hold of it. And it says nothing about the ‘responsibility’ of theories for their own popularisations … For British psychology tends to behave as if it has no history … Her analysis powerfully illustrates how any ideology succeeds in making an impact on individual experiences. In Lupton’s (2000) study of the ideals and experiences of first-time mothers, the white middle-class participants were clearly able to articulate their expectations of motherhood, i.e. what it means to be a good mother: ‘Good mothers’ were conceptualized as selfless, able to give unstinting love and time to their children and as having the ability to regulate their emotions so as to best interact with their children (Lupton 2000: 55).

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Specific social expectations about what a mother should do and be can radically influence women’s perceptions of motherhood. Grossman, Eichler and Winickoff (1980: 255) comment that the ‘idealized image of parenthood only serves to block our vision and to burden us with additional and unnecessary efforts to live up to this ideal’. In Nicolson’s 1986 study of 40 women in the early stages of motherhood, she found that almost all the women interviewed were constrained by their notions of what is ‘best for the child’, which normally required physical and emotional sacrifice from them. When society sets such strict standards for childcare and makes women responsible for childcare, women will frequently experience motherhood as traumatic and express ‘high levels of anxiety’ (Davies & Welch 1984: 413). It is also well documented that mothers who are exposed to such constructions of good mothering become distressed exactly because they think they should be happy. This ‘feeling low and feeling really bad about feeling low’ (Taylor 1996; Mauthner 1999, 2002) has been reported to be very typical in especially middle-class white women in Western societies, a population that is particularly exposed to the dictates of Western developmental psychology. Feminist critics such as Nicolson (1986) have consistently argued that postnatal depression is caused by the discrepancy between women’s experiences of motherhood and their expectations of motherhood. This ‘good mother’ discourse also legitimised another kind of surveillance that involved both the monitoring of how mothers care for their foetuses, infants and children and how fulfilled and happy they are while being involved with this carework. In a 1986 study Caplan (1986) reviewed 125 psychological articles concerned with childcare. She found that in these studies no mothers or no mother-child relationship was described as healthy, although some father–child relationships were described as ideal. This surveillance of mothers and their children aimed at ensuring the welfare of children is not politically neutral. Feminists have commented upon how child welfare policies have ‘functioned as mechanisms for the social control of poor persons, in particular mothers, in the interest of maintaining established economic interests and values which emphasise the responsibility of women for the reproduction of a compliant labour force’ (Mason cited in Phoenix & Woollett 1991: 18–19). Also, because the child development experts are likely to be middle-class and white and base their theories on studies conducted with white middle-class mothers and children, they are more likely to perceive mothers who are poor, working class, single, young and black as problematic and pathological (Phoenix & Woollett 1991). Several commentators have noted that, while most studies of normal development designed to provide better understanding of processes involved in mothering tend not to use black mothers or poor mothers as respondents, there is an overrepresentation of black and working-class families when the pathological is being studied (Burmeister-Nel 2005; Collins 1994; Phoenix & Woollett 1991) These ideologies, with their emphases on the developmental needs of children and women’s roles in fulfilling those needs, have continued to be dominant despite the fact that they are being challenged in theory (by academics and other experts) and in practice (by the lives of ordinary people). The absolutist beliefs about the needs of children are in strong contrast with more recent claims about the psychological requirements for human development. Assumptions about the responsibility of mothers for their children’s development have been severely contested (Braverman 1989; Schaffer 1986; Urwin 1985;

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Woollet & Phoenix 1991) despite a vast number of studies that examine the impact of mothers’ behaviours on their children. For example, the leading US developmental psychologist Jerome Kagan (1978) claims that, other than protecting their children from disease and physical discomfort, parents need not follow specific child-rearing guidelines if they want healthy normally developed children. Other developmental psychologists such as Sameroff (1975), Lerner and Lerner (1987), and Stern (1985) also emphasise that there is no one way that parents should be to ensure positive developmental outcomes. Sameroff talks about the self-righting tendency in the organism, while Lerner and Lerner (1987: 400) propose a ‘goodness-of-fit model’ between the developing characteristics of children and pressures or demands for adaptation present in their environment. Subjectivity taken seriously: the rational mother and the natural mother With the advent of the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and feminist psychology there has been an increasing demand that psychology should also look at mothering from the perspective of women. These demands led to new emphases in psychological research on mothering: questions about what mothering means to women themselves and how women experience being mothers began to emerge. In what Gerson, Alpert and Richardson (1984: 434) called a ‘revolution in psychological literature’, mothering was now discussed as a role or as an identity that influences and impacts on the lives of women in particular ways (see for instance Breen 1975; Oakley 1979, 1980; Raphael-Leff 1991; Rich 1976; Smith 1992, 1999). Within feminism, motherhood has been theorised, described and investigated in many different ways. However, while many feminists have sought to capture the impact of motherhood on individual mothers, they have also been vociferous in warning against institutions of motherhood that create prescriptions and the conditions in which women experience motherhood (Rich 1976). It is ironic therefore that within feminist psychology two dominant ideals of motherhood, which in different ways also obscure women’s experiences of motherhood, can be discerned. Parallel to two of the main feminist traditions, the romantic tradition and the rationalist tradition (Ehrenreich & English 1978; Hare-Mustin & Marecek 1990), two very different perspectives on mothering have emerged. In the romantic tradition the differences between women and men are affirmed and motherhood is celebrated as an institution of caring, love and power. In the rationalist tradition, differences between men and women are denied and the mothering role is regarded as one of the multiple roles that men and women can play in society. Equality: the rejection of mothering as the primary role of women In the rationalist ‘women-are-equal’ perspective women are viewed as more similar to than different from men (Hare-Mustin & Marecek 1990). Rationalist feminists demand that differences between men and women should be minimised or ignored and that women and men should have equal opportunities in all spheres of life. Women, they say, should not be limited by biological sex. To achieve equality women should assume control of their own lives and assert themselves. Such a feminist perspective can lead to a wide variety of views on mothering. It might

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simply mean more ‘successful management’ and ‘problem-solving’ (Epstein 1987). For instance the viewpoint might be that children should have multiple caregivers and that in the case of a nuclear household, the husband and wife should be equally involved and both reasonably familiar with the child. Husband and wife should also be equally invested in their careers and these careers should have comparable importance in family decisions. Within the ‘women-are-equal’ perspective the more extreme view is that women should not become involved in mothering at all, that they should be evacuated from motherhood (Allen 1984). Allen writes that it is only if women do not have children that they can devote themselves to their own creative development and therefore become equal to men. Bassin, Honey and Kaplan (1994: 6) commented about this ‘second wave of feminism’: …(T)heorists argued that mothering was the source of women’s devaluation and lack of transcendence. To be a person, for the most part, meant to be a person like a man. Personness and subjectivity necessitated moving beyond, or avoiding altogether, home and motherhood. Betty Friedan’s The Feminist Mystique deemed home ‘a prison’. Juliet Mitchell (1971) saw child rearing as an ‘instrument of oppression’, and Shulamith Firestone (1971) went so far as to entitle a chapter ‘Down with childhood’ and called for a total severance of the tie between women and motherhood.

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Rationalist feminists demand differences between men and women should be minimised or ignored. The viewpoint might be that children should have multiple caregivers and that in the case of a nuclear household, the husband and wife should be equally involved with the child.

In many ways this new rationalist attitude to mothering is compatible with the proposition, so central to traditional Western psychology, that the emergence of an independent, autonomous, separated, differentiated individual is the culmination of human development. While the rationalist feminist emphasis on the needs and rights of women demands that women should see to their own needs and rights, this is virtually impossible for women in the light of ‘(c)urrent family and work structures and current understanding of children’s needs, combined with very limited childcare facilities’ (Davies & Welch 1984: 423). Consequently, this kind of feminism can make mothering an even more traumatic experience for women: The feminist challenge to confirm rather than negate oneself may even be heard as an impossible further demand on someone who, in all probability, feels she has enough to attend to (Davies & Welch 1984: 423): Condor (1986) criticised rationalist feminist psychology for presenting ‘an objectified pathologised picture of women as passive victims of social forces’ (112), regarding women who make more traditional choices as suffering ‘false consciousness’. Similarly Simons (1984)

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claimed that feminists often fail to acknowledge that for many women who are employed in unsatisfactory jobs, motherhood is by far a more meaningful and significant endeavour than staying on in the job. She also pointed out that mothering could be very meaningful for women in careers they enjoy and find rewarding, even feminist women. Davies and Welch (1984), in discussing the compatibility of feminism and motherhood, found that motherhood can be an empowering experience for women because control over the child-rearing process is experienced as a source of power for many women. Gerson (1984) found that although some feminist women, rather than risking their own freedom and individuality, choose not to become mothers, feminists also strongly believe that motherhood provides women with opportunities of ‘active mastery and assertiveness’ (Gerson 1984: 395). This critique is at the basis of a more romantic feminism. The celebration of motherhood: the ideal of maternal thinking In the romantic ‘women-are-different’ perspective women are regarded as special because their lives are oriented toward caring for others (Hare-Mustin & Marecek 1990). The mother–daughter bond is seen as representing both the training ground for caring and the most enduring women-to-women relationship; one of mutual support (Van MensVerhulst et al 1993). This romantic motherhood discourse is based on the work of feminist psychodynamic theorists such as Nancy Chodorow (1978) and Dorothy Dinnerstein (1977) and feminist philosopher Sara Ruddick. Hare-Mustin and Marecek (1991: 33) describe the impact of the work of Chodorow as follows: According to Chodorow, boys and girls undergo contrasting experiences of identity formation during their early years under the social arrangement in which the care of infants is provided exclusively by women. Her influential work, which is based on objectrelations theory, argues that girls’ early experiences involve similarity and attachment to their mothers while boys’ early experiences emphasize difference, separateness, and independence. These experiences are thought to result in broad-ranging gender differences in identity, personality structure, and psychic needs in adulthood. Women develop a deep-seated motivation to have children, whereas men develop the capacity to participate in the alienating work structures of advanced capitalism. Thus, according to Chodorow, the social structure produces gender personalities that produce social structures. Although Chodorow locates the psychodynamics of personality temporally and situationally in Western industrial capitalism, psychologists who draw on her work often overlook this point concerning the social context. Her work is used to assert that there are essential differences between women and men and to view these, rather than the social structure, as the basis for gender roles. Another prominent feminist whose work has been used to assert that there are essential differences between men and women is Ruddick (1989), who coined the phrase ‘maternal thinking’ to refer to women’s capacity for empathic relationship: ‘the intellectual capacities she develops, the judgements she makes, the metaphysical attitudes she assumes, the values she affirms’ (Ruddick 1989: 77). She identified three interests that govern maternal thinking: interest in preserving the life of the child, interest in fostering the child’s growth and the interest in shaping an acceptable child. While both Chodorow and Dinnerstein

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made it clear that they see current gender differences as a function of contemporary Western child-rearing practices, Ruddick (1992: 185) stated that she ‘speak(s) of mothering rather than parenting as the work in which child-tending men and women engage’ simply because ‘(t)his terminology acknowledges the fact that mothering has been – and still is – primarily the responsibility of women and that history has consequences’. French feminist writers such as Kristeva, Irigaray and Cixous also emphasised the ‘salient role that motherhood plays in providing access to unappreciated and previously unspoken female experiences’ (Bassin et al 1994: 9). In the 1980s and 1990s, feminist psychologists such as Miller (1986), Surrey (1995), and Gilligan (1982), used Chodorow’s, Dinnerstein’s and Ruddick’s work to articulate the need for ‘a new psychology of women’. Central to this notion of a ‘new psychology’ is the assertion that women are essentially different from men and that the identity of women is not constituted through the processes of separation and individuation, but rather through relationship-differentiation. The organising principle of ‘self’ is replaced by ‘self-in-relation’ (Surrey 1995). The basic goal of human development in this framework is not autonomy, selfreliance, independence and self-actualisation, but relationship. They claimed that women’s sense of personhood is grounded in finding satisfaction, pleasure, effectiveness and a sense of worth, if they experience their life activities as arising from, and leading back into, a sense of connection with others. In their incorporation of the work of Ruddick, romantic feminists claimed that this ‘maternal thinking’ is a natural capacity that makes women special and even superior to men: it is exactly women’s natural capacity for mothering that makes them more powerful in the world. These romantic feminist ideologies have been popularised in texts such Tannen’s (2001) You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation and Gray’s (1993) Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Although the notion of maternal thinking is based on a new affirmation of women, it entails many problems. Again, women are inevitably and naturally bound to be mothers (even if only in being daughters or in having the capacity for mothering); they are expected to be capable of empathy and attentive love. A new naturalised version of motherhood for women has been articulated. The essential and natural identity for women was again connected to motherhood, even if in more symbolic ways. Women could be powerful, but they could only be powerful by being mothers or by their mothering qualities. Romantic mothering discourses, as well as more rationalist mothering discourses, are constructed in specific intellectual and political contexts (Collins 1994). Feminist scholars who work in the rationalist and romantic traditions, in their attempts to theorise motherhood, fail to realise that they themselves are rooted in specific locations and that these contexts will shape their discourses. Collins states: Their theories may appear to be universal and objective, but they actually are only partial perspectives reflecting the white middle-class context in which their creators live. Large segments of experience, those of women who are not white and middleclass, have been excluded. Feminist theories of motherhood thus cannot be seen as theories of motherhood generalisable to all women …. Such theorists are themselves participants in a system of privilege that rewards them for not seeing race and class privilege as important. Their theories can ignore the workings of class and race as systems of privilege because their creators often benefit from that privilege, taking it as a given and not as something to be contested (1994: 72).

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Any attempt to distil or formulate a unified ‘women’s experience’ of motherhood, is again creating what Lorde (1984: 116) calls a ‘mythical norm’, that is ‘which each one of us in our hearts knows “that is not me’’’. The tendency is to suppress differences or to exclude those whose experiences do not fit: ‘(W)ithin feminist theory a search for a defining theme of the whole of a Feminist viewpoint may require the suppression of the important and discomforting voices of persons with experiences unlike our own’ (Flax 1990: 621, 633). The attempt to unity is always inevitably accompanied by a search for the essential and that, in turn, always results in some things being categorised as particular, accidental, lying outside the essence (Young 1990). Paradoxically, feminism which starts out with ‘the very radical act of taking women seriously, believing that what we say about ourselves and our experience is important and valid, even when … it has little or no relationship to what has been or is being said about us’ (Harris 1990: 587) now ignores many women’s voices in order to distil a unitary women’s experience. Rationalist and romantic traditions of feminism have articulated very different notions of motherhood and what it should mean to women. Just as conservative ideals of motherhood lead to traumatic experiences of motherhood, feminist expectations and standards can lead to negative experiences of motherhood. Within different traditions of feminism it has been emphasised that, although theoretical paradigms can help women to locate individual experiences and to relate these experiences to each other, the danger exists that paradigms can remove women from individual experiences, instead of illuminating them. It is therefore stressed that feminist psychologists should continuously explore and understand how women are experiencing motherhood and why. Bassin et al (1994) write: ‘The mother’s subjectivity, her ability to reflect on and speak of her experience, has become an important ingredient in altering myths and changing social reality.’ More recently, feminists have thus emphasised that feminist psychology will be irrelevant and even destructive if the multilayered nature of women’s lives are subsumed by a notion of a monolithic women’s experience, a feminist psychology ‘trying to find a new, fixed definition of woman’s nature … creating a new ideal of womanhood’ (Simons 1984: 357). These feminist critics of ideological tendencies in writings about motherhood (also in feminism) argue that the goal of feminist psychology should rather be ‘to document the diversity of women’s experiences and not to reify an essentialist argument about gender … Feminist psychology of women will generate no universal laws’ (Fine 1985: 170–180). In this regard, Flax states: ‘Knowledge constructors should seek instead to generate an infinite ‘dissemination’ of meanings. They should abjure any attempt to construct a closed system in which the ‘other’ or the ‘excess’ are ‘pushed to the margins’ and made to disappear in the interest of coherence and unity. Their task is to disrupt and subvert rather than (re-) construct totalities or grand theories’ (1993: 140). This documentation of the diversity of women’s experiences of motherhood has been the focus of feminists working in the fields of psychology, philosophy, anthropology and sociology (Kruger 2003). These feminists have started to produce texts that document the voices of lesbian mothers, immigrant mothers, black mothers, impoverished mothers, teenage mothers, single mothers, adoptive mothers, incarcerated mothers and mothers living in the developing world (see for instance Chase & Rogers 2001; Davis-Floyd & Sargent 1997; Garcia-Coll et al 1998; Hunt 1999; Lindenbaum & Lock 1993; MacCormack 1982; Ragone & Twine 2000; Thompson 2002).

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Trends in psychological research on motherhood, mothering and mothers in South Africa Despite the proliferation of psychological research on motherhood over the last decades, relatively little has been published about motherhood in South Africa. It can be said that psychological research on mothering in South Africa has been scant, but to the extent that there is a psychological literature on South African motherhood, the focus has tended to be mostly on mothers and children at risk. Teenage mothers (Boult & Cunningham 1991; Parekh & De la Rey 1997; Macleod 1999), single mothers (Danilewitz & Skuy 1990, 1992), working mothers (Barling & Barenbrug 1985; Suchet & Barling 1986), jailed mothers (Eloff & Moen 2003), depressed mothers (Cooper et al 1999; Spangenberg & Pieters 1995; Trotter et al 1992) have been the focus of researchers’ attention. Much of the work that has been conducted falls within the framework of more instrumental discourses, where the assumption is that populations of ‘problem’ mothers should be identified and should become the target of psychological research and intervention. The work of Macleod (1999, see also this edition) can be read as a powerful critique of this tendency in mothering research: in her meticulous reviews of the South Africa literature on teenage pregnancy she highlights some of the very problematic assumptions that have informed most of the research on teenage pregnancy in South Africa – that ‘teenage pregnancies are unwanted, unplanned and occurring outside the context of marriage’ (Macleod 1999: 6) and that ‘teenage pregnancy had negative consequences and is therefore a problem’ (Macleod 1999: 1). This critique about unquestioned assumptions can be generalised to all aspects of South African mothering research and has to do with the fact that most research on motherhood is conducted within the framework of instrumentalist motherhood discourses where there are powerful assumptions about what constitutes ‘good mothering’ (Kruger 2001; Kruger & Smit 2002). Despite a number of historical-political studies (see for instance Brink 1987, 1990; Du Toit 1991; Gaitskell & Unterhalter 1989; Kruger 1991; McClintock 1993; Walker 1995) of the ideologisation and institutionalisation of motherhood within South Africa, an analysis of how contemporary mothering and mothers are psychologically impacted upon by race, class and culture is almost entirely missing from the South African literature. Few documentations and descriptions of contemporary regular mothering experiences and practices exist. In 1990, Chalmers published African Birth. Childbirth in Cultural Transition in which she described South African birth customs and health care during pregnancy in detail (Chalmers 1990). While this book provides the reader with rich descriptive data on childbirth in South Africa, it does not attempt to explore the psychological functions and impact of such traditions on South African women. Only three published studies could be traced that explored the subjective experiences of South African mothers. Jeannes and Sheffer (2004) focus on the subjectivity of five white middle-class mothers, but do not aim at investigating how race, class and ethnicity impacted on their experiences of motherhood. Kruger (2003) also analysed the narratives of middle-class women to understand to what extent the personal stories of individual women can subvert motherhood ideologies and change social realities. Daniels (2004) investigated how women in an informal settlement represented ‘motherhood’ in photographs. It is clear that the gaps in South African mothering research are manifold. First, very little research has been conducted in general. Second, research on the subjective experiences of mothers themselves is virtually non-existent. Third, the impact of race, class, culture and

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sexuality on motherhood experiences and mothering practices has not been sufficiently researched. These tendencies in South African mothering research should be compared with historical tendencies in international research on mothering. Despite the vast amount that has been written about motherhood, there has been a pervasive tendency, when studying marginal mothers (black mothers, poor mothers, minority mothers, mothers in developing countries), to focus on ‘problem mothers’ and to not focus on the subjective experiences of mothers themselves (Collins 1982, 1989, 1994; Burmeister-Nel 2005). In 1994 Collins highlighted the fact that feminist theory has been centred on the experiences of white middle-class women in developed countries: … placing the ideas and experiences of women of color in the center of analysis requires invoking a different epistemology concerning what kind of knowledge is valid. We must distinguish between what has been said about subordinated groups in the dominant discourse, and what such groups may say about themselves (1994: 60). She also warns against the danger of simply supplanting one group’s theory with that of another, by, for instance, asserting that black women’s experiences are more valid than those of white middle-class women: Just as varying placement in systems of privilege, whether race, class, sexuality, or age, generates divergent experiences within motherhood, examining motherhood and mother-as-subject from multiple perspectives should uncover rich textures of difference. Shifting the center to accommodate this diversity promises to recontextualise motherhood and point us toward Feminist theorising that embraces difference as an essential part of commonality. While it has been indicated that feminists have in recent years started to document the diverse experiences of motherhood and to explore the impact of race, class and culture on mothers, these documentations and explorations have only started to inform new ways of feminist theorising about motherhood. Within certain feminist paradigms there has been the notion that the simple telling of diverse motherhood stories would be sufficient (Kruger 2003).

Conclusion It has been argued that traditional and persistent ideologies of motherhood still conceal the many different meanings that mothering can have for different women. Moreover, the fact that such meanings will be largely structured and shaped by the socio-cultural and economic circumstances of the women who are doing the mothering, has been obscured by child-centred research and essentialist and unrealistic ideals of motherhood. Even more disturbing, though, is the fact that the variety and complexity of women’s perceptions and experiences of motherhood have also been obscured by ideological tendencies in some feminist theories. Despite substantial attempts within feminism to highlight the contexts within which women mother and the diverse experiences of mothers in different contexts, very little psychological research has been conducted about the South African motherhood experience. It can be argued then that psychologists (particularly social constructionists) have seriously struggled with the question of how to generate knowledge that takes subjectivity

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and context seriously. Some claim that theory is impossible, that one should ‘seek to develop situated knowledges from multiple standpoints which take account of the complexity of women’s experiences and the differences among us’ (Jackson 1998: 62). This notion of the impossibility of theory has resulted in the suggestion of new approaches to scholarship and the introduction of new academic discourses: ‘subjugated discourses that have heretofore been acknowledged within the academy’. The argument is that by telling stories and jokes (rather than constructing theory) dominant discourses of theory are disrupted and redefined, thus accounting for different subjects in different contexts (Babcock 1993: 63). This in turn leads to the kind of standpoint that theory must be replaced by ‘academic pluralism’ (Stanley & Wise 1991), or ‘that no unitary science is possible’ – that there could not be ‘a’ theoretical standpoint as the generator of true stories about social life. There could, presumably, only be oppositions, and criticism of ‘false stories’. Such a position creates new problems for feminists and other researchers who feel that they should generate ‘useful knowledge’ (Flax 1993: 4). Critics talk about epistemological relativism, ‘a tepid epistemological laissez-fair’ (Ruddick 1996: 267) or ‘a sliding toward a depoliticized relativism where every viewpoint becomes equally valid and true’ (Allen & Baber 1992: 6). Such an epistemological stance seems to make action in the world impossible – and if knowledge does not lead to social action and political action it certainly is not useful knowledge. It seems that a two-fold process is necessary. First, the task is to uncover the different and specific experiences of different women and different communities/groups of women. Such an uncovering should highlight the fact that motherhood is much more complex than the dominant discourses or ideologies suggest: that is motherhood is seldom either only fulfilling/successful or only difficult/problematic. Poor mothers, single mothers, lesbian mothers, teenage mothers, working mothers can experience motherhood in any different way or ways: unhappy, happy, dysfunctional, efficient, suffering, elated. Similarly, the experience of motherhood for middle-class mothers, full-time mothers, married mothers, heterosexual mothers, mature mothers will be multi-layered and complex. Secondly, the processes that create these differences, layers and complexities should be explored. Such processes (e.g. racism, imperialism, class, and national, religious and sexual oppression) are connected to each other and determine, in very different patterns, the lives of all women and men (Gorelick 1996: 398). Also, when researchers do listen to the individual stories of women, they should assume that as long as women tell stories in contexts where there are asymmetrical relations of power they will impose order and structure, even when they themselves do not experience it. Thus the individual poor woman as storyteller becomes a ‘practical theorist’ and a ‘reflexive negotiator of meaning’ (Jackson 1998: 46). The understanding that individual narratives often serve to reproduce dominant ideologies (even if in very subtle forms) suggests that the mere citing of the narratives of individual women will not ensure transformation (Kruger 2003). From a feminist perspective, where there always is an emphasis on practical politics (Knapp 2000), it is not enough to simply give voice to women and to facilitate the telling and re-telling of stories: the stories have to be analysed, scrutinised and understood in juxtaposition to other stories. It should be assumed that there are no innocent stories, that even the stories of the oppressed are shaped or informed by ideology, if not by the dominant ideology by some other ideology. Walby (2001) writes about what she sees as the

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problematic assumptions of standpoint theorists: firstly that oppressed women can see more clearly than those that are blinded by their interests involving them in the dominant ideology and secondly that direct experience is less mediated than knowledge mediated by theory. As feminists it is safer to assume that all stories are mediated, it is up to the researcher to find out how and for what purpose (Personal Narrative Group 1989). South African research on motherhood, mothers and mothering should aim: ❍ to discuss the extent to which motherhood ideologies can be traced in the narratives of South African mothers; ❍ to explore whether there are uniquely South African motherhood discourses that can be discerned when looking at the narratives of South African women; ❍ to discern how the cultural and socioeconomic contexts (race, class, sexuality, religion, ethnicity) within which women mother, impact on their subjective experiences of motherhood and their mothering practices, and ❍ to discuss how women themselves, in narrating their experiences (talking about what they feel, think and do as mothers) can shape, strengthen and undermine dominant discourses.

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T. Shefer

Chapter 13

‘Going places’: Black women negotiating race and gender in post-apartheid South Africa Carol Long and Estelle Zietkiewicz Introduction Post-apartheid South Africa has seen a number of political and ideological changes which have presented South Africans with new opportunities for constructing their identities, their future options and their relations with others. Universities have seen a concomitant increase in enrolment of black1 women, broadening career opportunities for these women as well as offering exposure to academic ideologies, including academic feminism and psychology. In the context of this explosion of possibilities of self, many South Africans are renegotiating and resisting dominant ideologies of race and gender which have traditionally been intolerant of alternative discourses. This fundamental tension between homogenisation of categories of identity which support dominant discourses and explosion of ways of constructing the self is central to the transition South Africans are experiencing. Within the context of this transition are a number of ground-breaking policy decisions supporting gender equality and thus supporting the development of the identity of ‘woman’ beyond traditionally circumscribed roles and choices. South Africa, however, still experiences a radical disjuncture between progressive policy and oppressive praxis (Zietkiewicz & Long 1999). The potential for explosion of possibility of self thus co-exists on a day-to-day level with discursive constraints linked to acceptable social practice. This paper considers descriptions by 55 black undergraduate women at the University of the Witwatersrand of their experience of identity, with particular focus on how categories of race and gender are conflictually incorporated into lived experience. The following analysis emerges from a written exercise given to a class of second-year social psychology students of mixed gender and race. At the beginning of their course, they were asked to

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write a brief essay on their own identities so they would have personal experience to draw on in relation to various theories presented through the course. Little guidance was given regarding what they were to write, thus allowing them to approach the task in whatever way was meaningful to them. This also allowed them to choose which aspects of their identity were most important to them, and to discuss these in as little or as much detail as they felt comfortable. The accounts were subsequently grouped according to categories of race and gender because these were so frequently identified as important. While this is perhaps unsurprising given their centrality to experience, what was unexpected in this regard was the extent to which students divulged personal experiences and painful conflicts rather than restricting themselves to predictable self-narratives. Accounts were then analysed drawing on discourse analytic methodology (e.g. Parker 1992) with particular interest in methods focusing on analysis of subject positions within discourse (e.g. Davies & Harre 1990; Hollway 1989; Phoenix et al 2003). Within a discursive framework, analysis pays particular attention to the interrelations between discourses, the ways in which people position themselves in relation to these discourses and the discursive field in which the text is produced. In this case, texts were produced in a university environment for two white women lecturers. Discourse analysis is particularly interested in the ways in which subjectivity is described when it enters the social domain (Hollway 1989). The audience provides an imaginary discursive setting in relation to which the speaking subject positions herself. This may partly explain the prevalence of discussion concerning university, race and gender in the accounts generally, and in the accounts by black women in particular, although the data suggests that there were many other imaginary audiences at play. We aim, through analysis of identity constructions and contradictions of these women, to open up understandings of experience of identity in South Africa such that the complexities of categories of race and gender emerge. It will be suggested that these complexities disrupt the unitary ways in which such categories are constructed within discourses of culture and of psychology. In each case, categories of ‘black’ and ‘woman’ are constructed as unitary and non-contradictory. Further, liberalising and psychologising discourses tend to construct such categories in individualistic terms. We suggest that such experience is located at a critical turning point in the history of our country. The data presented here reflects a point in South Africa’s history where the newness of our democratic birth has started to settle into the reality of different options for equality but has not yet borne the fruits of the anti-apartheid struggle. The young women represented here are faced with opportunities and challenges very different to those of their parents and an environment with very different possibilities and demands. Our purpose in this regard is twofold. First, given the paucity of research into the experiences of black women at this unique juncture in history, we hope to open space for their voices to emerge. In line with this, emphasis is on presenting verbatim accounts (Opie 1992) although this limits the extent to which analysis can be undertaken. Second, analysis is conducted within a post-structuralist framework which, it is argued, offers possibilities for understanding the complexities and conflicts expressed in the data in politically useful ways.

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Post-structuralism, feminism and psychology Viewed from within the intellectual and academic culture of Western capitalist democracies, feminism and post-structuralism have emerged as two leading theoretical currents of our time (Fraser & Nicholson 1994; Becvar & Becvar 1996). According to authors such as Flax (1993) they have discovered their affinities in the struggle against the grand narratives of Western Enlightenment and modernity. Arguments both for and against the development of a feminist post-structuralism are extensive (e.g. Nicholson 1990). Although both post-structuralism and feminism have their major support base in the West, they have gained an enthusiastic response from South African academics. Nonetheless critical scholars have questioned their pragmatic relevance in African contexts, and concerns have been raised about the capacity of poststructuralist arguments to neutralise political action (Bazilli 1991; Burman 1990; Mouffe 1995). In response to this critique, we have argued previously that post-structuralism and transgressive political praxis are not necessarily antithetical, and that, on the contrary, post-structuralism may be harnessed effectively in strategic political action (Zietkiewicz & Long 1999). We aim to show that other theoretical concepts central to post-structuralism also have application in an African context. This is well illustrated below in the conflicted, fragmented and multi-discursive accounts of the women who participated in this study, a Identities and Psychology Mainstream psychology has been critiqued by both post-structuralists and feminists for its tendency not only to individualise, but also to pathologise, identities that fall outside of the gambit of psychological ‘normality’, implicitly constructed as white, Western and male (Burr 1998; Parker & Speares 1996). It has been argued that psychological theory not only supports morally loaded binary oppositions (e.g. black/white; woman/man; ignorance/knowledge) but proposes ‘neutral’ theories which construct the undesirable side of a particular equation as lacking or psychologically unsophisticated. Gilligan (1982), for example, argues that theories of moral development apply masculine criteria of ‘justice’ to both women and men, thus allowing a more relational feminine orientation towards morality to be constructed as insufficiently moral. Schweder (1982) applies a similar logic to culture, implying that psychological theories of morality judge Western individualised approaches to morality as superior. In these (and many other) examples, the assumption is that there is something psychologically inferior about women as compared to men or one culture as compared to another (Mama 1995; Schweder 1990). Experiences of contradiction in relation to particular constructions of ‘woman’ or ‘black’ are then in danger of being read through a theory which favours the conclusion of personal insufficiency rather than social construction, thereby reinforcing perceptions of self and other in terms of the valued norm. It has been suggested, for example, that psychological (and psychiatric) distress amongst women is potentially a gendered expression of social inequality, which is then reread through psychology as pathology and, in so doing, reinforces social inequality. Similar arguments have been made regarding race (e.g. Mama 1995). Social categories then become dislodged from power relations and psychology offers instead the incitement to monitor oneself in relation to apparently neutral psychological norms (Burman 1994; Rose 1989). In relation to psychology, then, both feminism and post-structuralism offer alternative ways of analysing identity in which difference, multiplicity and contradiction can be read through discursive power rather than through individual pathology. We restrict our focus here to how post-structuralist concepts of identity, truth and power/ resistance offer possibilities for analysis and for feminist praxis in a South African context.

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finding which underscores a central characteristic of post-structuralist understandings of subjectivity. The young women in this study actively engaged with subjective experiences of contradiction and struggles around identity. The extent of similarity between women when describing these conflicts and struggles is noteworthy. One of the principal challenges issued to modernist understandings of self by poststructuralist theorists has concerned the nature of identity. In a break from humanist conceptions of the individual as a unique, coherent, unitary, rational self, discourse theorists have abandoned the belief in an irreducible essence of subjectivity. By contrast, they have proposed that identity is socially constructed, multi-discursive and frequently fraught with confusion, doubt and ambivalence (Weedon 1991). It has been argued that this precarious subjectivity is permanently in process, constantly being reconstituted in discourse each time we, as subjects, think or speak. One way in which this reconstitution of the subject occurs is via the process of interpellation. Interpellation has been described as the process through which the subject is hailed by a particular discursive formation. Discursive systems make available a number of subject positions, and as subjects within these multi-discursive networks, we frequently find ourselves located and locked into contradictory subject positions (Burr 1995; Davies & Harre 1990). A consequence for experience of subjectivity is that discourses come to speak to subjects such that the requirements of the discourse or subject position become incorporated into the construction of self on the level of lived experience (Rose 1989). A second central tenet of post-structuralist theory with which this paper concerns itself is the notion of truth. Discourse theorists have rejected claims that religion, scientific theories or traditional rationality can give access to truth (Henriques et al 1984). Rather, they suggest that only specific knowledges with specific implications can be produced. Consequently it has been argued that experience has no inherent, essential truth or meaning. Instead, its truth and meaning may be constructed in language through a range of discursive systems, which often constitute conflicting versions of social reality, which in turn serve conflicting interests. This range of discourses and their material supports in social institutions and practices is integral to the maintenance and resistance of forms of social power (Fairclough 1995). Critics have argued that such a position creates an impasse for individual or political change, but authors such as Burman (1996) have suggested that within a post-structuralist feminism we can choose between different accounts of reality on the basis of their social implications. Hence, by analysing the power relations that emanate from a particular discursive framework, we can evaluate its formations of power. Third, seminal to the project of post-structuralism has been the development of a theory of power and resistance (Sawicki 1991). Understandings of patriarchal power have always contributed to feminist understandings of self; however, the contribution of poststructuralists, and particularly of Foucault, is in the micro-politics of power and challenges to state-centred, monolithic, top-down understandings of the modernist (juridico-discursive) model of power. Instead, Foucault (1975) argued for a conception of power as exercised rather than possessed that is productive rather than simply repressive. This implies that the most useful analyses of power should be made at a micro level. In Foucault’s critical project, he contrasts repressive and disciplinary power. This distinction is important in the context of this chapter, as the history of South Africa is marred with evidence of coercive and repressive

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power, but, as Terre Blanche, Bhavnani and Hook (1999) argue, South Africa, in spite of its celebration of liberation, is now shifting to mechanisms of discipline and control more insidious but no less effective than overt repressive mechanisms of the apartheid era. Thus, in Foucauldian terms, disciplinary power is a knowledge of, or power over the individual body, its capacities, gestures, movements, location and behaviour. Disciplinary power represents the body as a machine which aims to render the individual more powerful, productive, useful and docile (Sawicki 1991). Disciplinary power is evident in the paradox of the motherhood role in African society: black women are revered for their fertility and restricted because of it (Nhlapo 1991). These disciplinary mechanisms do not police individuals by the threat of violence or force (as is the case with repressive power), but rather by creating desire. Through the creation of desire, that is, attracting and locking individuals into specific identities, norms are generated against which individuals, their bodies and behaviours are judged and against which they police themselves (Rose 1989). The process of policing the self is enabled by the mechanism of panopticism (Foucault 1975). The panopticon is a prison system through which guards can observe prisoners at all times, but the prisoners cannot see the guards observing them. According to Foucault, this sets up a system of surveillance in which the subject is constantly, but only potentially, watched. The subject therefore has to practice self-surveillance in order to monitor his/her own behaviour and discourse. In this way, surveillance is internalised into self-policing, thus entrenching both internal and external policing of behaviour. Rose (1989) has applied this concept to the ways in which psychology offers a set of techniques by which the subject is incited to test herself against yardsticks of psychological health and normality. Foucault (1978) extends his understanding of power by defining it as dependent on resistance. This implies that power is bi-directional and diffusely located. Foucault (1978: 95) argues that ‘where there is power, there is a resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power’. This implies that we can never step outside of discourse, but, as Foucault goes on to explain: I’m simply saying: as soon as there’s a relation of power, there’s a possibility of resistance. We’re never trapped by power: it’s always possible to modify its hold in determined conditions and following a precise strategy (1978: 95). Sawicki (1991: 1) draws on Foucault to illustrate implications for feminist resistance. She sees discourse as ‘ambiguous and plurivocal. It is a site of conflict and contestation. Thus, women can adopt and adapt language to their own ends ... They may not have total control over it, but then neither do men’.

Analysis Young women of the 1990s I have been influenced by some feminist ideas and at the university I have learnt about the equal rights of women. For example, my father expects me to behave as a traditional Zulu daughter. Like helping out with the chores that are supposedly for women, and when my father is talking I have to accept what he is saying without questioning him even though I don’t agree. So this identity as a Zulu daughter often clashes with my identity as a feminist.

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One of the most prevalent and most emotionally described concerns for responents involved negotiation of gender roles in their daily lives. This centred largely around an experienced schism between the positions and possibilities offered by feminist discourses associated with the university and those offered by patriarchal discourses in the home. These different requirements appear to be more broadly connected to contradictions between liberalist discourses of equality and traditionalist discourses regarding the rights and duties of women, and were invoked repeatedly in the data. Interestingly, the sources of these discourses were specifically located. Discourses of equality were almost exclusively located as coming from the university environment. Traditionalist discourses were either attributed to the family structure (as directed from the imperative of the father or mother) or to the specific culture with which the woman identified. There were repeated explanations that ‘in my culture’, women were supposed to cook and clean. The imperatives within different identified cultures were similar. This is significant since, by locating the source of the discourse, women could construct specific sources of blame and blessing, thus attaching value to the different objects. The family and culture were chosen as sources of blame and therefore possible sites for resistance. Similarly the university (rather than, for example, the new democratic political climate in South Africa) was identified as saviour and provider of good. One can be caught and paralysed by the imperatives of home and culture, but: The fact that I am a student at the University of the Witwatersrand makes me feel very happy and feel positive about my self and future. The reason for this is that by being a student, I know that after completing my studies, I will be faced with a bright future … I will be very independent and responsible. This discursive opposition sets up a number of important possibilities and constraints, an issue to be returned to in the following section. Vivid descriptions abounded of experiences of different and diametrically opposed requirements from the family/culture and the university, requirements which often left women with little option other than to convert these contradictory requirements into strictly separated action. As one woman summarised, ‘this leads to a dilemma situation’, one in which a coherent and enduring sense of identity becomes impossible. One woman described herself as a ‘young woman of the 1990s who is going places’ but could not maintain this identification through to family discourse: I feel free to express myself and speak my mind. I have liberated ideas and feel equal to everyone around me including men … My identity of a daughter in a Shangaan family makes me feel less powerful and not as equal and liberated. In my family I am expected to show respect to my elders at all times and this means I am not as free to express my ideas as I could be, I’m more restricted. Another element is the idea that the man is the head of the family and commands more respect from the women than he gives us. An example which makes me angry is that my mother and sisters and I are expected to wait on my father even though I feel he is as capable of doing things around the house as us. But I’m not free to express my opinions therefore I feel quite powerless. The shift from the active ‘going places’ through restriction to a conclusion of powerlessness further divides the discursive opposition by attaching emotion and differential agency to

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different gendered subject positions, in order to negotiate the experienced impasse between the requirements of family/culture and those of the university. The experience of contradictory imperatives was central to the descriptions offered by most women. For some, this meant contradictory identification with the opposing imperatives. Discourse theory explains this in terms of contradictions between discourses. Each discourse implies a particular subject position; a shift from one discourse to another involves a concomitant shift in positioning, no matter how contradictory. Such contradictory identifications here often involved women proclaiming themselves as opposed to patriarchal demands, contradicted later by statements which accepted these demands. For example: At school I learn about equal rights for women and gender equity … with me I know that I am independent. [A few paragraphs later] … I wanted my boyfriend to help me with looking after the child. He refused and made it clear that that was the women’s job. I am now used to that and accepted that. Knowledge of self (‘I know that I am independent’) in this case cannot be maintained in opposition to the more powerful male knowledge (‘he … made it clear’). Monologue (talking about what I know) must be negotiated in dialogue with the male voice. This strategy most clearly illustrates experience of schism of subjectivity. Some women attempted to resolve this conflict by wishing that something in the external environment would change so that the demands of being a woman would become easier. For example, one woman spoke of the expectation of her culture that ‘the woman takes care of the man’: I console myself by thinking that I will fall in love with someone liberal, someone independent, someone who does not need taking care of. This resonates with the passivity that many women spoke of being expected to adhere to, thus positioning women as powerless to actively respond to what is constructed as a strictly rulebound and very powerful discourse, one in which the rules cannot be directly challenged. This woman hopes to indirectly avoid gendered expectations by finding someone who will not need her to obey the rules of caring. Even when resisting these external rules more actively, it becomes difficult for individuals to make a change: My next husband, if any, should be like a partner in marriage not actually the HEAD of the family who makes all rules. I am happy to have found a steady footing on my own again. This is not because my late husband was oppressive, it is because widows and wives in the black cultures are very restricted traditionally. Thus the possibility of the external environment changing ends again with a rule statement, that widows and wives are restricted, and that the individual, despite his or her hopes, is required to conform to these rules. Seeking a partner with whom to escape the contradiction does not guarantee escape from ‘traditional’ expectations. Internalisation of responsibility and subsequent strict self-policing offered a third possibility for negotiating the requirements of being a woman. For some women this meant a rejection of the category woman, since they were unable to celebrate womanhood because of internalisation of patriarchal connotations:

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Women are seen by the society as inferior, weak, short-tempered and above all can bear children. I realise that by falling under this category it has influenced my behaviour, but at the same time I really don’t enjoy being a woman because of the labels given to us. In this example, ‘society’ constructs women in similar ways to conservative psychology, and the speaker compares herself to these categories. This self-surveillance was often translated as an attempt to be a perfect cultural member as well as a perfect university student. The massive task of being all things to all discourses resulted in many women feeling pressure, speaking of underachievement, depression and fearfulness of not being good enough. One woman speaks of her feminist understanding of the demands of her culture: Certain expectations emerge such as to be overloving and overcaring and also to be very submissive. In my culture I came to realise that a woman is not dignified until after she becomes somebody else’s wife. This therefore means that a woman will only be able to achieve respect and such through men. I then realised that women’s identity is violated and distorted in this case. [Later] … I tend to be afraid of any behaviour that could cause me to despise myself or to make me feel inferior, worthless, evil and shameful. While this woman speaks predominantly of the demands of her culture, it could be argued that demands are made of her both from patriarchal and from feminist discourses. This links to her assertion that she is afraid of any behaviour. Her internalisation is of fear of any form of possible badness. If she subscribes to the discourse of her culture, she is positioned by feminist discourse as being violated. If she subscribes to feminist discourse, she is positioned as violating her culture. It could similarly be argued that her individual emotional world is first constructed by culture (‘overloving’; ‘overcaring’; submissive’), but by resisting these, she is at risk of being constructed through the individualising terminology of psychology (‘I tend to be afraid’). With an explosion of possibilities for self comes the ever-present possibility that, no matter what she does, she will be a bad person. This leaves her with recourse to careful and consistent self-monitoring, a strategy which comes at great cost. If a woman is able to resist contradiction, externalisation of hope or internalisation of badness, she is left with having to actively reconcile constructions of womanhood with her lived experience. Some women spoke about verbal resistance to others by explaining to them the reasons why they resist dominant gender discourses. This represents a direct discursive challenge and, of course, is usually met with a counter-challenge. One of the women who described most actively taking up this counter-challenge graphically describes the consequences of disagreeing with her husband: The African wife is supposed to be humble and succumb to whatever is said by the husband since the husband ‘knows what is best’ … When I (disagree with my husband) he says that I seem to know too much about women’s rights. I let him know that I feel that men have been getting away with inventing stupid ideologies to further their restless libidos, as if women don’t have them. We are therefore constantly engaged in a struggle where he wants me to be the all agreeing wife but the way that I think and the way that an African wife is supposed to ‘think’ are in direct contrast to one another and we often have to fight about a lot of things before I can convince him that it is not a matter of being ‘disobedient’ but of saying and doing what is right. At times I also

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have to sacrifice what I believe in order to calm the situation between us and not to bruise the ego that men believe is their birthright. Resistance is powerfully stated and sustained; sacrifice, for this woman, is generously and patronisingly given. Her access to discourses of feminism and psychology (here in relation to the male ‘ego’) allows her to convince her husband that he is wrong. Sacrifice in order to maintain a good relationship was more important for other women, who were not able to maintain the opposing position as strongly as the woman cited above. Awareness, or conscientisation, does not necessarily offer a solution to the fragmentations of lived experience or to the pressures of conformity to the culturally entrenched ‘ideal’ which women are ‘expected’ to conform to. These subject positions suggest the options available to women for resisting dominant discourses. All of them represent possibilities (and non-possibilities) for challenge to the patriarchal ideal. None of them involves an active engagement or negotiation with the requirements of liberalist or feminist discourses, and it is to consideration of this differential split that discussion now turns. Educated or a daughter? The division between family/culture as blame and university as blessing constructs family and culture in similar terms to Foucault’s analysis of the functioning of the panopticon. In the texts produced by these young women, we have already had a sense of the degree of self-monitoring which occurs. Much of this is related to the policing of discourse by family members. While the source of patriarchal discourse is identified as culture and the family, the construction of who or what polices and implements this discourse is almost exclusively located in the realm of the family. The primary object of this discourse is the Father as head of the household, who lays down the rules and the acceptable parameters of behaviour, and who does not tolerate dissent. This represents a process familiar to feminism, by which male ideology is enforced by the male figurehead. Panoptic processes are not, however, restricted to this. Two other policing figures stand out. First, parents are identified as reinforcers and regulators of patriarchal female behaviour: As a daughter I have to be this obedient person who ‘absorbs’ everything my parents say as the ‘truth’ with no questioning. Although I am expected to be responsible … they feel that they have control over me and what is wrong according to them should also be wrong with me, no questions asked … I am personally not eager to do all of the above, but duty calls. This locates the policing function firmly within the family and clearly in terms of expectation and duty. This is not a coercive (repressive) power at play; rather the ‘force’ used is a discursive one which calls upon the Parent and all the intersecting discourses about the wisdom of parents. To resist the Parent is not to stand up for gender equality but to show disrespect and naïve arrogance. This (ungendered) parent often intersects with another discourse regarding conflict between adulthood and childhood, a conflict which is described as co-existing with the split between university and home. As descriptions of feeling independent and active at university and dependent and passive at home abounded, so too did descriptions of feeling

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like an adult at university and a child at home. A number of the young women were mothers themselves, but described nonetheless feeling like a child in relation to their parents, and being expected to act like a child in relation to their parents: As a daughter, I am expected to be totally dependent on my family, not to be able to cope with the pressures of studying and working at the same time. Being a worker and a student, I am expected to be mature, independent and deal with the pressures that arise … When I go home I am expected to behave like a teenager who has no direction in life and who never expresses her opinion, reason being that I am still ‘small’ and will continue to be ‘small’ until I get married. When I am at university I am encouraged to stress my opinions at all times and to structure my life accordingly and maturely. The panoptic function thus becomes blurred with the parenting function. In modern discourse, a good parent teaches the child good opinions, realises that the child does not yet know what is expected or what she wants, and lends the child the sophistication she as yet lacks. Many respondents were late teenagers (aged 19 to 21), and as such the division between a longing for gender equality and a longing to become an adult (to have adult equality) easily becomes blurred. It consequently becomes increasingly difficult to resist patriarchal discourse because of its close pairing with moral discourses of parenthood. Second, policing of discourse is described as occurring through the maternal function: My mother wouldn’t allow me to talk about gender equality, she argues that the education has spoiled our African way of thinking, and encourages us to act against our own culture. She expects me to behave like a traditional Zulu woman and conform to my father’s laws even though they are just against my will. The link between the mother and tradition is strongly made in this description. The mother becomes the custodian of culture and the one responsible for making sure it is kept alive. James and Busia (1994) and Nhlapo (1991), amongst others, have argued that this is often the role of the mother in black culture, and that it is a role to be respected and honoured. Without the mother’s custodian role, local culture is in threat of being annihilated by the dominant culture. Again, the discursive rhetoric overlays with other discourses regarding the sanctity of culture, such that to reject one’s mother is to reject who she is as well as what she stands for – the ‘African way of thinking’. The object of the Mother is thus imbued with respect. Simultaneously, disrespect for the mother’s regulation of patriarchal discourse implies disrespect for her and for the role she plays. This presents a challenge which further entrenches the divide between university and home: Becoming part of the Wits community has enhanced my idea of being an individual. With the experience, I always feel I have to tell people what I think and feel. This … becomes problematic to my grandmother who holds the idea that I should not talk back at adults, the man is always right and so on. Her ideas, I respect, but that has meant I had to compromise my identity to please her, and I had not been able to do so. As a result she does not trust me. She believes I have been brainwashed by Wits and I should stop studying and get married.

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The pain of this negotiation becomes apparent. For this woman, gender equality or inequality became a choice between the university and her grandmother, between being an individual and patriarchal submission. At the same time, university is valued by many families. In the context of the limited opportunities of apartheid, education is often highly valued as a way of opening opportunities to the benefit of all. This poses a contradictory imperative which makes it difficult to reject the ideals of the university and paradoxically even more difficult to reject the ideals of tradition: Being a university student nowadays means acquiring a certain level of status in the society since educated people are the ones the society look upon as their potential leaders, therefore they are allowed certain rights like freedom of speech. [Later] A Xhosa woman is expected to remain technologically (educationally) illiterate but culturally brilliant. My education is more like an insult to my tradition … I am limited to what I do because rights are for males only hence I have to be obedient and do what I am told to do without questions. This again raises the question of what requirements and imperatives being a university student brings. While the family is often spoken about in conjunction with policing words like ‘expectation’ and ‘demand’, the university is often accompanied by words such as ‘independent’, ‘successful’ and ‘responsible’. This positions the university within a liberalist discourse and as the only way forward to the future. The university becomes positioned at times as a magic solution to the conflicts and contradictions of daily life. For example, some women spoke about the pressures and imperatives of living in their mother-in-law’s home, often linking this to the mother-in-law’s role as perpetuating gender inequality and restricting independent action. One woman turned to the university for a magic solution: As a married woman, I have to stay with my mother-in-law. This is what our tradition views as important. But I can’t tolerate doing that [but] find that I am obliged to … you have to behave like a slave … So I sometimes wish that I were a man, not a woman. I wish if I finish schooling, get a job, all my problems will be okay. In this conceptualisation, schooling becomes associated with patriarchal power, with the power of being a man. On an experiential level, women often spoke about the pressure associated with the drive towards independence and responsibility through schooling and the demands of the family. This was often spoken about in material terms, for example concerning time pressures between study demands and the demands of household chores, but it becomes clear that these pressures are experienced on the level of subjectivity. One woman spoke about the dilemma of juggling study and household chores: Family members might refer to me as disrespectful, disobedient, naughty daughter when I am unable to perform what they expect me to. On the other side my university lecturers might perceive me as being irresponsible, lazy, loafing student when I do not perform my work. A dilemma here is that I cannot satisfy both the institutions at the same time. Within this dilemma, she keeps finding herself on the wrong end of a binary opposition, and either way her fault is constructed as psychological. The extent to which young women are actively trying to negotiate the heterogeneous demands placed upon them, actively

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trying to take up the explosion of possibilities for self and trying to negotiate the conflicts they are faced with is admirable and exhausting. The question which arises regards the clear differentiation between family as blame and university as blessing. Why is culture and tradition so clearly positioned as to blame, while the university becomes valorised? Of course patriarchal values are more firmly placed in the family across many cultures, and the university introduces new ideas which challenge these accepted notions. Foucault, however, argues that all discourses and all institutions come with their advantages as well as their costs. It could be argued that the university offers possibility for liberation, but simultaneously constrains. What is striking in the descriptions offered is the emphasis on individuality and freedom. Notions of relationship and interconnectedness are largely excluded from university discourse. The university thus becomes the site for liberalist and psychological discourse which offers new possibilities, but also centralises agency, personal responsibility and self- determination. As one woman said, ‘I am who I am because I have decided on who I will be’. From a post-structuralist perspective, these constraints cannot be taken lightly. Post-structuralism argues that such conceptualisations require the modern subject to be unitary and coherent. Just as the family is constructed as acting as a panopticon, it could be argued that the university fulfils a panoptic function through the imperative to internalise modernist, individualist and psychologised notions of self and action. The noticeable silence around critique of the university as an institution, except in so far as it sometimes co-exists with a personal and personalised feeling of alienation, may arguably illustrate the extent to which the requirements of the liberalist discourse have been incorporated into subjectivity and deployed in a self-policing function. It is suggested that the regulatory and productive power of the university is such that it is less threatening to construct the family as panopticon than it is to do so in relation to discourses located within the institution of the university. This possibility poses serious challenges to feminism in terms of offering possibilities for resistance and change. If the dominant options for engaging in feminist discourse presently also require engagement in individualist discourse, alternative strategies and possibilities need to be theorised. Being black The foregoing discussion has focused exclusively on gender issues, and has suggested that sites of gender equality often interact with culture and therefore, by implication, with race. Feminist thinkers both nationally and internationally have recognised that there is often an artificial and tenuous divide between gender and race. Much attention has been paid by feminists to the double oppression black women encounter (eg. Bazilli 1991). Locally, there is a relatively shared commitment that ‘any South African feminism that ignores the centrality of race will run the risk of making it invisible, and it will be a limited feminism’ (De la Rey 1997: 8). It is therefore of interest that, for these women, the identification of being a black women was largely constructed in terms of gender inequality rather than racial inequality. Further, although one’s membership of a culture distinct from other black cultures was often a topic of discussion, very seldom did women speak of themselves as black as opposed to white, or as black in a predominantly white environment. Given the salience of race difference and

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racism in South African, this represents a noticeable silence in the data gathered. Some of the few instances where black identity is spoken about in contrast to white will be explored before attention turns to analysis of the more frequently made comments about being black in relation to black. When women did refer to themselves as black as opposed to white, this was often done implicitly with little reference to ‘white’. Analogously, there were very few descriptions of experience of racism. One woman, for example, when describing her experiences of being the only black musician in an orchestra, characteristically described this experience with reference to herself rather than the Other: The fact that I was black made me feel inferior but inversely it made me practice more and try to prove myself, more than the other members. It is striking that her description of alienation is turned inwards through responsibility and that the ‘Other’ is described in the vaguest terms and devoid of responsibility in relation to the situation. Similarly, the few descriptions that existed regarding black identity were generally decontextualised and dehistoricised. Three predominant positions emerged relating to a denial or disownership of being black, a position related either to shame or to a positive valuing of Blackness. Denial or disownership of being black was predominantly related to apartheid constructions. For example: Being black is an identity that I don’t like. This is due to the history of our country. The ‘so-called’ blacks have been labelled with negative connotations. They have been named as stupid, inferior, thieves, baby-makers, apes etc. … Thus, I can’t accept that I am black. Within this position, it is only possible to understand oneself as black through the eyes of white apartheid South Africa. Reappropriation of racial identity becomes constrained by existing constructions. It is worth noting that these psychological labels were actively propagated by apartheid psychology (Louw & Foster 1991). Within this position, disownership of race becomes the only possible way of resisting the personal insults resident in racist discourse. Another woman succinctly conveyed this strategy by saying ‘I don’t believe that I am black but only my skin is black’. For some, however, it was more difficult to resist personalising the constructions of racist discourse, which became markers of personal lack and shame: Being black I was socialised in a different way from other racial groups. In that manner it became difficult to interact with some of the peers from other cultures. Its like I am seen as inferior, stupid because I come from African family who believe in circumcision, so I had to go through it also. Ascription of blame to self is striking in this description. The ascription of inferiority and stupidity is located within the way this woman was socialised by her own culture, not in the way that other cultures have appropriated her identity. Through the academic language of socialisation, her difficulty in interacting becomes a personal failure rather than a historically entrenched consequence. The link between inferiority/stupidity and the painful ritual of circumcision inscribes her racial shame on her body and conflates the discriminatory

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gender practices of her own culture with the racist practices of apartheid. By the end of her description, it is no longer clear where the boundaries are between racial and gender discrimination. It becomes apparent that race and gender are inseparable in ways which are often not spoken about. Not only do they represent double points of oppression but the negative constructions of race and gender become intertwined with constructions of culture and, for this woman, do so to the point of abusiveness. The above description stood out as the most extreme, but not the only, description of powerlessness to resist broader social constructions of self. Within this position, it was not possible to take up pride in relation to racial self. This stood in contrast to women who explicitly valued their blackness, for example striving to ‘keep my identity as a strong brave black woman who thinks that people are inherently good’. This raises the important question of what made it possible for some women to resist racist constructions, while others either internalised these or were left with no choice but to deny their racial identity. This question is beyond the scope of the paper, and the data collected held few clues. What was striking in this regard, however, was how the history of our country was positioned in relation to description of black identity. South Africa has been democratic since 1994, and the documented atrocities of the apartheid era would have directly touched the lives of many of these women and their families. Yet there is a noticeable elision of this history from the accounts produced. Significantly, however, statements of pride were usually made in conjunction with evaluations of the status of the past in the present. For some women, this was constructed as a personal pride, in direct opposition not only to the past but also to other black South Africans: Being South African and black in this country has been very difficult. I have taken a position of not feeling sorry for myself like most black South Africans do. When things go wrong or difficult they blame it on the past … I look towards the future, that is working hard to achieve everything I ever wanted, and being black is not going to be an obstacle. It is actually a blessing. The past is dismissed as a contentless arena which serves the predominant purpose of becoming a convenient location of blame. A retelling of the past holds little value for this woman; instead she focuses on the future and draws on an individualist discourse of success. Furthering this individualist discourse, she defines herself clearly in opposition to her group (‘most black South Africans’). Her description suggests impatience with the past which is linked to impatience with the obstacles that black people face. It could be argued that this represents a conflation of apartheid history with the meanings apartheid held for black identity (e.g. that being black is a curse, not a blessing). In order to resist the latter, it became necessary in some cases to resist the former as well. For this woman, this can only be an individual resistance, one which requires of her to set herself in opposition to the group, and to reflect impatience with dwelling on the past which emerged in descriptions by other women as well. For another woman, it was possible to maintain pride in relation to the past while still recognising the pain and injustice of this country’s history: she explained why she was proud to be a black South African: This is not because of the recent changes in our country but because of the strength and knowledge I have gained in the country. I have gained things from both the negativity and passivity that existed in the past and that still exists now. I feel proud

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to say that I (a black, female South African) have met the challenges that faced me and they have built me to be who I am today; a proud black, female South African. History becomes positioned here as a learning experience, as a place to gain strength through adversity. This positive rewriting of experiences of passivity and negativity is directly appropriated in terms of personal and group pride, although personal challenge is still valued more strongly. The focus remains on the speaking ‘I’. This extract represents one of the few which stressed continuity between the past and the present, thus locating history as maintaining important consequences for current experience. History, however, is still alluded to in vague terms. Further, it is ambiguous whether the consequences of history (‘negativity and passivity’) concern the feelings of black women or the actions of the past. Even in an explicit and positively valued statement, history cannot be named or described. Only one woman of the 55 who contributed referred to actual events in the past. I was born [in] 1977 in Soweto, a year after Soweto uprising took place on the 16th of June 1976. During the time of struggles in Soweto, I was very young to understand what was going on. I lived with my grandmother who owned a shebeen. During those years owning shebeens was illegal, as a result my grandmother was always in and out of jail. As a child, I was affected emotionally by the presence and disappearance of my grandmother. I did not understand why when white policemen came to my home then my grandmother disappears. My grandmother was a very hard working woman and she sacrificed her life in jail in order to give us money to go to school. For this woman, description of the past is characterised by confusion, but perhaps also identification between the events of her life and the history of her country. She ends the story with reference to a strong female role model, one which she later elaborated as a significant influence on her life. That this description stands out as the only one in which history is used to define self suggests that a large and important part of the lives of these women has been shrouded in silence. In light of theory and practice regarding the importance of a retelling of the past (Etter-Lewis 1991) and of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), where retelling and documentation is a primary concern, it is of import that this analysis suggests relative silence regarding the events of our history. It is possible that these gaps may be related to the fact that women were writing for white academics. It could be postulated that we represented the university discourse of individualism and liberalism discussed above, and that limited space has been allowed for narratives of the past within this future-oriented discourse. This is unlikely, however, to be the whole story. The fact that history and racism found so little space in comparison to the fecundity of description relating to gender and intra-racial difference holds important implication for the opportunities available for women to negotiate very real racist issues in terms of identification of self. Speaking in mother tongue For obvious reasons, discussion of divides in South Africa has focused on the divide between black and white. South African feminists have, however, begun to tackle some of the other racial divides present in a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual nation. Ntone and Meth

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University has at times become the magic solution to the conflicts and contradictions of daily life for many young black South African women. The division between family/culture as blame and university as blessing consructs family and culture in similar terms to Foucault’s analysis of the functioning of the panopticon.

(1997) and Tutu (1997) both discuss the fragmentation and racial animosity present within the fragmented category of ‘black’ women, particularly regarding difference between women located historically as black versus coloured. The data collected here reflects poignantly that it would be a mistake to assume homogenisation and harmony between people of colour. While there was little discussion of black/white divides, much discussion was predicated upon difference and alienation along a black/black divide. As the analysis will suggest, discussion of these divides was reminiscent of racialised discourses in which value systems become set up between members of different groups. Such discussion reflected the importance of ethnicity for identity, but also the potential for ethnic categories to evoke prejudice. We believe, however, that it is politically important to distinguish the intra-race differences expressed here from differences set up within apartheid structures. Black/white racism is distinguishable from the ethnic divides described below in the extent to which it was enforced both ideologically and practically to act as a vehicle for discrimination. Descriptions of ethnic divides, in contrast, are often discursively linked to pride and differentiation rather than disdain and domination. Thus while the consequences of racism are severe and morally demeaning, the employment of ‘ethnicity’ described below can be understood to serve useful purposes, but often at cost to those defined outside of the boundary of pride.

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Strict lines were drawn between different cultural identities, and stories abounded of how these lines interacted with issues of gender, identity and adequacy. Too many illustrations of the consequences of intra-racial divides exist for full discussion; analysis here will focus on class markers of difference, linguistic markers of difference and finally on the blurring of boundaries inevitable when constructing markers of difference. ‘Chocolate-coated’ divides One of the boundaries which emerged related to where a person lived or went to school. Differences between rural, township and Western settings were used to separate women from their social group, often to their disadvantage. Those who went to private schools described similar experiences: I was brought up in a Western culture and went to predominantly English schools. The fact that I am a black South African, automatically classifies me as a snob or black ‘yuppie’. And that I am also not that familiar with most words in my mother tongue, makes the classification even stronger. Thus Westernisation, arguably one of the central processes of a university education as well, displaces women from their culture and group identity. They come to position themselves as separate, and expect others to do the same. This displacement was often spoken of in relation to alienation: While in Soweto, at my grandparents’ place, my neighbours and peers see me as one of these people who have neglected the township by moving to stay in white suburbs. To make things even worse, I speak English most of the time and from Wits university, this makes them see me as a high or middle-class academic person and this makes me feel isolated … because I am seen as a different person who cannot relate with township lifestyle. Akin to the opposition set up between home and university, a mutually exclusive boundary becomes erected between ‘real’ township people and those who have forsaken what another woman describes as ‘the African way of living’. This discursive construction immediately places differential value on those who have stayed close to their culture and those who have strayed, disregarding whatever circumstances might have led to a particular woman being educated in an English school or being unable to speak her language. Similarly differential power relations are reinforced within the discourse, such that one who does not know her culture or language is presumed to have left not only culture but class, and thus becomes a recipient of labels and a silent member of the discourse. This boundary separating those with rights to group identity from those who do not is extended between different groups as well. Women in relationships with black men from other ethnic groups, for example, spoke about feelings of isolation and inferiority in relation to their partners’ cultural members. A Tsonga woman involved with a Sotho man, for example, explained that ‘most people are against our intercultural relationship’. Describing the difficulties they had encountered maintaining their relationship, this woman illustrates how ethnic divides not often focused upon in South Africa become entrenched in similar ways to racial divides. Similarly, another woman describes her alienation as a member of the Tsonga culture (a minority group) unable to speak other black languages at university:

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I have to communicate in English which does not go well with certain black people. Black people who speak English outside of the classroom are regarded as snobs or ‘chocolate-coated whites’. Although I can cope it does cause people to alienate themselves from me because I cannot speak Zulu or Sotho which is slightly unfair since they cannot speak Tsonga. This illustrates the conflations of class (English presumed to be Westernised), language and culture which become markers of difference, often regardless of circumstances. The most predominant vehicle through which borders were constructed was through language. The borders of language With the linguistic complexity of South Africa – 11 official languages each of which appears to hold different hierarchical status and calls upon different cultural identities – the potential for fragmented identity seems immense. The following two extracts illustrate how closely language and identity are connected, and how differently one’s positioning in relation to language relates to discursive opportunity or constraint: I am a Southern Sotho and my home language is Southern Sotho … I do not want [my identity] to be mixed with anything else. I always want to speak my home language as perfect as I can. I am a Northern Sotho who cannot speak the language properly since we’re not living in the Northern Province. I have the strong need to know my language properly … The problem start when I am in Johannesburg, people will ask me what kind of language do I speak. Also they are able to identify that I come from Pretoria when I speak. This is because they say Pretorian language have a mixed jargon. This makes me feel uncomfortable, it is like I do not have identity. Purity of language and one’s relation to and knowledge of one’s language is discursively constructed as a barometer of the value of one’s identity. This discursive demand is constructed as a personal imperative (‘I have a strong need’), but also as a dimension upon which others hold the position of judge. Again, culture and language become markers of adequacy. For some women, this judgement was constructed in relation to members of the same linguistic culture, while for others it became a boundary separating them from members of other linguistic cultures. Judgement from members of the same linguistic culture could be understood in similar terms to the family’s strict policing of the separation between ‘home’ and ‘university’. University is a place for most women in which the demands of the multilingual setting require them to speak more than one language, but as soon as they are within the domain of home, they are required to remove all trace of the traces left by university life. Going home means: I have to switch to Setswana and speak it properly or else I get criticised of wanting to adopt other people’s language and fearful to express myself in my own mother tongue. Language thus becomes a criterion through which one’s value as cultural member can be measured. As was seen in the quotations above, this external discursive imperative may also become incorporated into the project of the self such that language becomes a measure

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through which one can police one’s own cultural worth in the context of contradictory demands. One woman, for example, described enjoying university life because of the possibilities offered to speak a number of languages ‘but sometimes I feel inferior and ashamed, it is like I am rejecting my own language’. Not only how one speaks one’s language, but how loyal one is, becomes a measure by self and other. To complicate matters further, however, some women described a contradictory imperative coming from members of other language groups. In contrast to the above quotation: At home I feel … happy about being a Northern Sotho speaker, but I feel very much inferior when I have to speak my language where there are people of different languages. Language thus potentiates an internal and intralingual site of conflict as well as an extralingual barometer of adequacy and allegiance. Language is simultaneously a site of pride and a site of struggle and compromise. Another issue is that of being a Tswana speaker in a multilingual university, in which interaction and communication is based on people who speak different languages such as Zulu, Venda, Afrikaans, Xhosa, etc. This happens mostly when I have to communicate with people who speak other African languages. They do not want to compromise, because of the culture stereotypes that they are holding, that they should be proud of their cultures and their languages. This leads to ending up adopting other languages and sometimes results in one speaking a broken language. So when I go back home I also have to change the language I adopted. Sites of pride thus overlap discursively with sites of judgement, struggle and compromise, since someone always has to compromise. Further, one’s relation with one’s own culture co-exists uneasily with one’s broader identity as ‘black’. This discursive construction sets up multiple points of comparison, and subsequently multiple points in which the speaking subject may measure and find herself lacking. Sites of pride thus cannot be occupied unequivocally, since such sites produce discursive schism and fragmentation. It is noteworthy that this active struggle is constructed in linguistic terms. It is not about who one is or what cultural beliefs one holds, but what language one speaks. It could be argued that this discursive construction is important precisely because of South Africa’s history of undermining and threatening culture, threatening to annihilate cultural pride. Historically, language became one of the primary sites of anti-apartheid resistance. The Soweto uprising was a resistance to apartheid government’s reinforcement of Afrikaans as the medium of learning in schools. Pride in one’s language is thus historically linked to racial pride and maintenance of heritage. A Mozambican woman, who shares a similar history but one in which she was not able to maintain her language, highlights how the words of one’s language become larger symbols of cherished identity: I grew up in Maputo and the children there were not allowed to speak their mother tongue. I grew up speaking Portuguese until I came to realise that was completely wrong and I have been denied the right to be Shangaan … I want to eliminate the feelings of inferiority that were imposed on my people and on me. However, I cannot do that unless I know the language of the people.

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Language therefore cannot be underestimated as a discursive point of resistance. The construction of one’s language in relation to pride is politically and personally useful in order to assert distinction and self-respect. At the same time, however, the experiences described here suggest that the possibilities offered by discourses of linguistic pride cannot be separated from discourses of linguistic compromise. Ironically, this strategy with its politically valued consequences has further consequences of division and fragmentation for what it means to be black. Negotiation of this contradiction, often described by the women in this study in terms of embarrassment, isolation and inferiority, needs perhaps to be one that takes place on a broader level in order to resist the individualising which seems to go hand-in-hand with contradictory relations to language. Crossing borders Apartheid South Africa was premised on strict divisions between members of different racial groups. The predominant discourse emerging from the above analysis relates to similarly strict divisions based on ethnic criteria. It became clear in apartheid categories, and it is equally clear here, that such strict divisions are often arbitrary and cannot hold. While many women vividly described feeling trapped within imperatives in relation to members of the same or different cultures, the extent to which these constraints were actively struggled against is also noteworthy. This represents resistance to the construction of these strict boundaries. For example: I am a black South African. To keep my identity I am expected to mix with other black students or friends … I am expected to dress in what is called ‘African style’, that is, as a woman I have to wear dresses … Secondly I am a Xhosa-speaking South African … To keep this identity there is a group of Xhosa speakers here at school in which I have to identify myself … It poses a negative demand on me because not all my friends are Xhosa speakers, I have friends who are Zulus, Tswanas and Sothos. Sometimes I do not like this thing that as a Xhosa speaker I have to belong to a Xhosa group because I feel we are discriminating ourselves from other groups. The process of naming some of her social identities and the constraints they bring allowed this woman to come to a point of rejecting both gendered and racial imperatives and thus to destabilise the categories which had been constructed. This destabilisation of expectation and demand removes racial and gendered categories from the assumptions and prescriptions they often imply. Through crossing borders of identity by actively engaging with multiple identities simultaneously, women were able to resist unitary and constraining constructions of self. In contrast to psychological discourses which read struggle and multiplicity through the often politically loaded language of pathology, post-structuralism understands this struggle, emotionally loaded as it is, offers opportunities for resistance to ‘negative demand[s]’ rather than views women as burdened and psychologically unhinged by such demands. Social constructionist theories argue that ascriptions to social categories produce truth claims which serve certain functions and that these categories are as arbitrary as the ascriptions given to them. The foregoing analysis has demonstrated that there is no such thing as the ‘black South African woman’. This is underlined by the experience of a number of people uneasily categorised in terms of their skin colour. For example:

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I’m constantly found in situations where I would refer to myself as a black South African female. However this is never accepted at face value. My fellow black colleagues have often found it important that I name/classify myself as coloured owing to the obvious features I inherited from my coloured mother. Amongst my coloured family and friends I always felt rejected and was reminded that my complexion is too dark to be coloured. What is required, then, is a recognition of the discourses attached to what it means to be black and a woman, as well as a recognition that each of these categories purports to refer to an identifiable object, but that each implies a number of contradictions and differences which make it impossible to think in homogeneous terms about black South African women. Engagement with multiple forms of subjectivity, it could be argued, offers women a means of survival in the face of discrimination and prejudice.

Conclusion It would be tempting, from the above analysis, to fall back upon familiar notions of oppression to interpret women’s described experiences. It is clear that constraints exist regarding what it means to be ‘woman’ and ‘black’. The trap in this interpretation, however, is that it serves to deny the extent to which women are actively engaging with a series of contradictory discourses and social imperatives, and finding ways nonetheless of living contradictory lives. What is striking in the accounts offered above is the extent to which women voice the complex demands in relation to race, ethnicity and gender, and the extent to which they find space to point out the contradictions as well as their consequences. If one were to read psychological disturbance into the accounts above, for example, one would fail to recognise the resistive and productive ways in which women positioned themselves in opposition to constructed categories of race, gender and culture. A second trap offered by interpretations of oppression relates to the temptation to place blame on what has been presented as strict traditionalist definitions of gender and cultural roles, and thereby to ignore the ways in which these discourses simultaneously enable and constrain in analogous ways to alternative liberalist discourses, including discourses of feminism and of psychology. Yeatman (1990) argues that binary oppositions, including oppositions between the traditional and the modern, are central to the modernist enterprise and antithetical to the needs of women. It is useful here to return to Sawicki’s (1991) conception of discourse as ambiguous and plurivocal. It is suggested that both ‘traditional’ and ‘liberalist’ discourse hold potential to enable, but also to constrain. It is important to acknowledge that feminist discourse is founded within a modernist intellectual tradition and finds its home within the university, a modernist and male-dominated institution. Feminist discourse may therefore come with its own price. For these women, that price was often connected to alienation and contradiction. Thus, while racism and ethnocentrism may distort feminism by falling back on cultural relativism and reification, feminism may distort the fight against racism and xenophobia by defining the players within this fight in individualistic terms. Similar to conceptions of gender, it is suggested that these women experience categories of race and ethnicity as simultaneously enabling and constraining. Prevalent constructions

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of equality, for example, could be understood as enabled by broader social institutions through which the ‘new’ South Africa is understood as nourishing. At the same time, however, the ways in which race and gender are constructed through interaction, and in interaction with each other, serve to constrain in complex ways. Within an understanding of the incorporation of discourse into subjectivity, it is striking that women resist the language of oppression to describe their experiences, but thereby locate themselves through internalisation, liberalisation, alienation and self-monitoring. A post-structuralist analysis is therefore useful, amongst other reasons, precisely in its understanding of the workings of power and resistance. This allows a multifaceted understanding of oppression and an understanding of the importance of resistance at the macro-level as well as the micro-level. Post-structuralist feminists have argued that transgressive praxis can be extended through the formation of multiple coalitions (e.g. Mouffe 1995). Based on the prevalence of descriptions of alienation in the analysis presented here, it is possible that a general shared sense of experience is minimal. As one woman pointed out: As a Zulu and a minister’s daughter my feminist ideas are not within their frameworks therefore my identity has to shift to accommodate the norms and demands of the society as I cannot rebel against them alone as an individual. This final quotation illustrates the intersection of ethnicity and gender and highlights the difficulty of taking them on as an individual project. While struggles against dominant constructions of race and gender were often accomplished individually, and often with recourse to the language of psychology, however, it would be a mistake to read this simply through individual psychological processes of difficulty or identity instability. The identity shift referred to in the above quotation suggests the usefulness of a post-structuralist reading in which such shifts are understood as endemic to constructions of subjectivity and which offer women active ways of engaging with as well as challenging the constructions they are expected to adhere to. We have traced intersecting and contradictory discourses which offer prescriptions for women regarding what it means to be ‘black’ and ‘woman’, prescriptions which construct unitary and homogeneous objects. Within a particular subject position, both ‘black’ and ‘woman’ are accompanied by strict rules and judgements, and imply one unitary ideal to which to aspire. This proscribes the clearly multiple meanings attached to both labels, as well as differences between black women. We suggest, however, that this double construction, while limiting the task of feminist anti-racism in certain ways, also offers unique opportunities for women. Precisely because the constructions of ‘black’ and ‘woman’ are intersecting, and therefore become blurred, they open up space for resistance. It becomes necessary to coalesce around both categories in order for women to think about themselves and their roles differently, and, as these women have described, to live simultaneously within and without such categories in order to construct identity anew.

Endnote 1 When quoting the women who participated in this study, the decision of whether to use capitalisation of racial categories (e.g. ‘Black’/’black’) was made according to what the participant had written. Elsewhere in the paper, ‘black’ and ‘white’ have not been capitalised as a symbolic means of unsettling the fixity of these categories.

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Section 3

Gendered practice and profession

© 2005 Nina Gelderblom

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Chapter 14

Pathological wombs and raging hormones: Psychology, reproduction and the female body Rachelle Chadwick Introduction Bodies have all the explanatory power of minds (Grosz 1994: vii). Debates about the significance of the body and its rightful place in theory have become hotly contested within several disciplines. For feminist theory, in particular, debates pertaining to the body have become critical to the redefinition of the feminist project more broadly. Currently, the body has been defined as ‘a zone of uncertainty’ (Kuhlmann & Babitsch 2002: 433), a ‘compelling and dangerous territory’ (Somerville 2004: 48) whose re-theorisation and re-definition are paramount (Shaw 2003). Within this chapter, the broad contours of current feminist debate regarding the body will be outlined. In addition, the position of psychology vis-à-vis the body will be considered. Psychology to date has not had a great deal to contribute towards theoretical reconsiderations of embodiment and there are only a handful of books which have explicitly explored the topic of the body from a psychological perspective (i.e. Radley 1991; Stam 1998; Ussher 1989). Simultaneously, however, psychology has from its inception been active in the construction of the female body as pathological, particularly in its reproductive capacities. In this chapter we will be considering various examples of this pathologisation, including: hysteria, the construction of pre-menstrual syndrome (PMS) as a psychiatric disorder and the psychological treatment of pregnancy/birth/the postpartum. We will also be asking how recent feminist re-theorisations of the body might potentially inform a richer psychology of women’s bodies.

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Madness and the female body Feminism has traditionally stood in uneasy relationship with questions surrounding the significance of the body. This is hardly surprising given that the oppression of women has been both historically and cross-culturally linked to biological fictions about female (reproductive) bodies (Sayers 1982; Ussher 1989). From the very first stirrings of what we know as ‘feminism’, the biology of the female body has been used to justify the subjugation of women. For example, just as women in Britain began to agitate for greater political rights, entrance to higher education and the professions from the 1870s, ‘scientific facts’ emerged which demonstrated that female bodies were in fact simply unsuited for such activities. Doctors of this time warned that female pursuit of opportunities in work and education ‘would lead to sickness, sterility and race suicide’ (Showalter 1987: 121). The intellectual inferiority of women was simply assumed and was attributed to their ‘reproductive specialisation’ (Showalter 1987: 122) and not to lack of educational opportunity. The woman’s suffrage movement in South Africa The first society formed specifically to agitate for the voting rights of (white) women was founded in Durban in 1902. The suffrage movement became a national organisation in 1911 and had numerous formal and informal links with suffrage movements across the world – most particularly in Britain. Not surprisingly, the issue of race divided women in South Africa from the beginning. When the Women’s Enfranchisement Bill of 1930 was eventually passed, the vote was accorded to white women only. The Act defined ‘woman’ as ‘wholly of European parentage, extraction or descent’ (cited in Walker 1979: 3). Most white suffragists of the time ultimately identified with the racial segregationist policies of the government – ‘Sex loyalty stopped at the heavily guarded boundaries of white privilege’ (Walker 1992: 314). A notable exception was Olive Schreiner, the novelist and polemical writer, who occupies an important place in the history of South African feminism. Schreiner’s feminism was ‘essentially non-racial and socialist’ (Walker 1979: 21) and discrimination against women was seen as only one part of a greater problem: That for which we labour … is a South Africa not mighty in wealth or in numbers, but great in freedom … which gives every man and woman in the land irrespective of race and sex, or speech and colour, the largest amount of liberty and justice accorded to men and women anywhere (Schreiner cited in Walker 1979: 21). In black politics before World War Two, questions of women’s suffrage were not on the agenda. It was not until 1943 (at women’s insistence) that women were granted full membership and voting rights within the African National Congress (ANC). For black women ‘women’s rights could not be separated from black rights’ (Walker 1992: 315). This did not however prevent black women from mobilised protest and in 1913 hundreds of women marched in outrage against the white state’s efforts to impose passes on black women (this was repeated in 1956). The Bantu Women’s League of the ANC was launched in 1918 (McClintock 1995). For many decades however, the emancipation of black women has been subsumed as secondary ‘within the national, democratic and socialist revolution’ (McClintock 1995: 182).

It must be remembered that by the 1870s, a particular interpretation of Darwinism by Herbert Spencer, known as social Darwinism, was rife and popular within scientific and intellectual circles. For social Darwinism, the supreme function of women was childbearing and the cost of reproduction for women was ‘constrained mental development’ (Hardy 2000: 15). Higher education was argued to be potentially ‘damaging’ to the reproductive

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health of women, and thus to be discouraged. For example, Spencer argued in 1867 that the reduced reproductive power of upper-class girls could be attributed to ‘the overtaxing of their brains’ (Sayers 1982: 8) and Henry Maudsley (an eminent Victorian psychiatrist) argued that, ‘the intellectual training of adolescent girls could produce permanent injury to their reproductive systems and their brains’ (Showalter 1987: 124). Social Darwinist ideas were readily used to justify conservative opposition to equal educational opportunities and attempts to keep women constrained to a rigid domestic role. Social Darwinism in South Africa By the 1870s Social Darwinist ideas were already being taken up in South Africa – particularly in relation to race (Dubow 1995). This was seen in increasing talk of national and racial superiority. ‘Race’ at this stage did not however necessarily mean what it means today. At the time, all those belonging to so-called ‘degenerate’ classes – for example, Jews, the Irish, prostitutes, criminals, feminists, the working class, alcoholics and the insane – were also seen as primitive racial ‘deviants’ (McClintock 1995). In South Africa during the late 1800s, racial difference did not only refer to black–white differences but also to Boer–British differences (Dubow 1995). It was only from the 1900s that race became more narrowly defined in South Africa and was translated into concrete political expression as racial (black–white) segregation (Dubow 1995). Social Darwinist ideas readily gave rise to eugenic practices and policies. Social Darwinist ideas were also used in South Africa to argue against equal opportunities for (white) women. Darley-Hartley, a doctor in the Cape, wrote in 1909 against women’s equality with a heavy use of Social Darwinist jargon and rationale. His article, published in the South African Medical Record, argues that a destruction of the traditional sex divisions between the sexes would be ‘pathological’ because it might be detrimental to the advancement of ‘the race’. He argued: It does seem to me that the indiscriminate competition of men and women in one field, instead of each reigning undisputed in his or her own, does not square with evolution, is, in other words, a deliberate putting back of the hands of the clock of ages (75). In the article he also refers to ‘the feminist movement in the Cape Colony’ (76) and makes reference to their ‘evil work’ (76) in advocating and justifying contraception.

Female madness was seen as the logical outcome when women attempted to ‘defy’ their ‘nature’ and live outside of their maternal or wifely roles (Showalter 1987). Interestingly, rising female protest against these roles from the 1870s onwards coincided with increasing numbers of women being labelled ‘mad’ and being subjected to various psychiatric treatments. The most commonly diagnosed female malady of the time was hysteria. Hysterical bodies The word ‘hysteria’ derives from the Greek word hysteron for uterus or womb and references to the disease go back to the ancient Greeks, Egyptians and Romans (Micale 1995). Hysteria has always been closely linked with women and their reproductive organs. For instance, the Greeks believed that hysterical symptoms (dizziness, motor paralysis, exaggerated emotional behaviours) were caused by the restless movement of the womb within the body – a kind of ‘wandering womb’ syndrome. According to Plato:

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The womb is an animal which longs to generate children. When it remains barren too long after puberty, it is distressed and sorely disturbed, and straying about in the body and cutting off the passages of breath, it impedes respiration and brings the sufferer into the extremist anguish and provokes all manner of diseases besides (quoted in Micale 1995: 19). The tendency to associate hysteria with the gynaecology of women continued into the nineteenth century. For example, once the process of ovulation was ‘discovered’ in the 1840s, it served to inspire a new ovarian theory of the disease (Micale 1995). The nineteenth century is widely known as ‘the golden age’ (Busfield 1996; Showalter 1987) of hysteria and was marked not only by increased incidence of the disorder but also by a proliferation of texts, theories and therapies seeking to explain and ‘cure’ it (Porter 1993).

Treatments for female madness Treatments for female madness could be brutal in the extreme during the 1800s. For example, one doctor describes the following course of action when confronted with patients guilty of things like masturbation, erotic tendencies, ‘bad’ language and dysmenorrhoea (painful periods): ‘… a course of injections into the rectum, introduction of ice and water into the vagina and leeching of the labia. The suddenness with which the leeches applied to this part will fill themselves considerably increases the good effects of their application, and for some hours after their removal there is oozing of blood from the leech bites’ (Smith 1848 cited in Ussher 1989: 7). Another barbaric treatment, clitoridectomy, was often used as a treatment for female hysteria. Clitoridectomy involved the removal of the clitoris, and frequently the labia as well. For example, Dr Isaac Baker Brown was convinced that madness was caused by masturbation and that surgical removal of the clitoris, by helping women to control themselves, could halt a disease that might otherwise ‘proceed from hysteria to spinal irritation and thence to idiocy, mania and death’ (Showalter 1987: 75). Brown carried out this surgery between 1859 and 1866. He operated on patients as young as 10, on epileptics, paralytics and even women who had eye problems. He operated five times on women whose ‘madness’ consisted of their wish to divorce their husbands, and found that in each case, the patient returned humbly to their husbands after surgery (Showalter 1987: 76).

Although by the late nineteenth century gynaecological models of the disease were challenged by neurological and later psychological interpretations, hysteria continued to be ‘the quintessential female malady’ (Showalter 1987: 129). According to Showalter (1987) the terms ‘hysterical’ and ‘feminine’ had become almost interchangeable by the end of the 1800s. Many of the characteristics applied to hysterics were seen as part of an essential, inferior and dangerous female ‘nature’ common to all women. How then was a woman labelled ‘hysterical’ likely to behave? The hysteric’s behaviour was likely to be strange and unpredictable, she might have fits or become violent, be subject to fainting, choking, sobbing or laughing spells, refuse to speak or starve herself, be prone to ‘unattractive, noisy, emotional displays’ (Chodoff in Showalter 1993: 287); some hysterical women even became paralysed, their bodies frozen into strange contorted positions (Evans 1991). In popular imagination, hysteria was closely linked with female sexual voracity and nymphomania (Evans 1991).

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African women and madness It is difficult to say to what degree psychiatric labels such as hysteria (and other forms of madness) were historically applied to African women. There is in fact very little historical research that documents madness among African women. Vaughan (1991) argues that African men were more likely to be declared schizophrenic and ‘mad’ because they were subject to greater surveillance as mine-workers and members of the labour force. According to Vaughan (1991: 22): African women, by contrast, were said to not have reached the level of self-awareness required to go mad, and in the colonial literature on psychology and psychopathology, the African woman represented the happy, ‘primitive’ state of pre-colonial Africa. After quite a long search I eventually did find one piece of research (McKittrick & Shingenge 2002) documenting a case of madness in a young Namibian woman. Her name was Nangombe and she was an uninitiated and unmarried girl who became pregnant in 1938 or 1939. At the time, the belief that pre-initiation pregnancies meant bad luck for the clan, the chief, and the wider community were still powerful. When the pregnancy was discovered, Nangombe was thrown out of her community, by the chief and she took refuge in a neighbouring society where she gave birth to a daughter. She returned to her community within a year (with her child), and this time the chief threw out the entire family and they were reduced to having to beg for food. Nangombe’s mother urged her to kill the child, fearing that the family would suffer even more ill-fate. She refused. Finally however, Nangombe gave in to her mother and strangled her daughter (then aged two). Her father and the chief reported her to colonial officials and she was sent to trial for murder (along with her mother, who was charged as accessory). Instead of trying her for murder, however, the entire court case became about finding out whether or not she was in fact ‘mentally defective’ (despite testimony from her village that she was sane). The seizures that Nangombe suffered from became the centre of extensive analysis to ascertain whether they were the result of epilepsy or ‘hysteria’. Questions were also asked about the connection between these seizures and her menstrual periods (clearly an effort to link her ‘madness’ with her reproductive body). Mental and bodily weakness were assumed to be linked and her actions were seen through ‘a colonial medical practice that linked irrational behaviour to women’ (McKittrick & Shingenge 2002: 223). Nangombe was finally judged to be insane (on the evidence of epilepsy) and was committed to a psychiatric hospital in South Africa where she spent almost five years.

Hysteria was also closely intertwined with the emergent feminism of the late 1800s. Doctors of the time noted that ‘hysteria was apt to appear in young women who were especially rebellious’ (Showalter 1987: 145) and several celebrated ‘New Women’ of the time (including the South African Olive Schreiner) suffered from ‘nervous’ disorders. Others included in this list are women such as Florence Nightingale, Eleanor Marx, Edith Wharton, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Virginia Woolf. Feminist activists of the time were labelled sick, ‘hysterical’ and abnormal women unrepresentative of the female sex and by the 1880s in England, it was commonplace for the term ‘hysterical’ to be linked with feminist protest (Showalter 1993). Feminists have been vocal in drawing attention to the ways in which the diagnosis of hysteria was potentially used as ‘a sort of punitive psychopathological labelling’ (Micale 1995: 76) employed against women who rebelled against the conventional roles assigned to women. Contemporary feminists have also questioned dominant views of hysteria as ‘a real, pathological entity … fixed and universal’ (Micale 1995: 67) and have instead emphasised

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The case of Edith Lanchester There were a few celebrated cases in which European women who challenged the norms of female behaviour were actually committed to lunatic asylums. One such case involved Edith Lanchester, the daughter of a wealthy London architect. Edith had been an honours student at London University and Cambridge, and worked as a speaker for the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) and Independent Labour Party and as secretary to Eleanor Marx. She met James Sullivan through her political activities and they started living together as a couple. Unfortunately, Lanchester’s father and three brothers kidnapped her and committed her to the Priory, a private asylum. Dr Fielding gave the supposed cause of her insanity as ‘over-education’. In addition ‘her opposition to conventional matrimony made her unfit to take care of herself’. Members of the SDF held a vigil outside the asylum and Lanchester was released five days later through the intervention of the Commissioners in Lunacy. (Showalter, (1987) The Female Malady).

the social roots of the disorder in the narrow, confining and oppressive social roles forced upon women (Ussher 1989).

Psychology and women’s reproductive bodies Psychology has had little to say about the possibly positive and joyful aspects of women’s reproductive lives and experiences. Instead, psychologists have approached menstruation, pregnancy, birth, the postpartum and the menopause solely from within a framework of pathology and dysfunction. This is perhaps not surprising considering the extent to which women’s reproductive bodies have become increasingly medicalised (and consequently subject to a disease framework) over the last century. The result has been that normal aspects of women’s lives have been pathologised and constructed as diseases. Medical accounts construct women’s biological bodies as prone to breakdown and as the inevitable ‘causes’ of all kinds of distress. Thus, in a normal event such as childbirth, it is now widely assumed that something will go wrong, women’s bodies will ‘malfunction’ and medical interventions and technologies have become the norm within western birthing practices (Cahill 2001; Martin 1987). Psychologists have followed suit, with the consequence that the female body only features in psychological discourse as the (reproductive) biological body – an underlying site of mental illness and disease (Stoppard 2000). Thus, it is only within the context of reproductive disorders such as PMS, postnatal depression (PND) and the menopausal syndrome that women’s reproductive lives have been of any interest to mainstream psychologists. We have little idea of how women themselves live and experience their bodies – reproductively and otherwise. So effective is the notion that women’s psychological problems invariably stem from their female (reproductive) bodies that women themselves have been found to attribute their own personal and relational difficulties to menstruation, childbirth or the menopause (Ussher 1992). In the following section we will be looking at how psychology has pathologised both women’s menstruating and mothering bodies. Recent attempts by feminist psychologists to address this pathologisation and offer alternative frameworks will also be examined.

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Hormonal bodies Premenstrual psychos? I’m bleeding down below I’m bleeding from my brain My hormones kick in They’re driving me insane. (Words by K. Turner © 1987 Peterson/Turner. Band: Girls in the Nose (cited in Figart 1996: 17). Women’s menstruating bodies have traditionally been objects of taboo, repulsion and fear (Ussher 1989) and have served as a ‘natural’ justificatory basis for cultural beliefs that women are irrational, dangerous and unpredictable (Chrisler & Caplan 2002). Arguments that the menstrual cycle predisposes women to madness and psychological instability have a long history, dating back to at least Ancient Greece (Schnall et al 2002). Written observations documenting connections between psychological disorder(s) and menstruation first appeared in the 1700s (Brockington 1998) and menstruation was construed as a ‘miniature insanity’ (Tilt cited in Ussher 1992: 129) by the 1800s. We have already seen in the example of hysteria how women’s reproductive bodies have been historically infused and overwritten with madness. It is difficult to believe that this could still be happening today. Surely we are long past the beliefs, misconceptions and ridiculous notions that surrounded the ‘wandering womb’ syndrome? Unfortunately this is not the case. Underlying many current psychological approaches towards women are similar notions about the inevitable connections between the reproductive life-cycle of women and mental illness. In this section we focus on the ways in which so-called premenstrual pathologies function in contemporary time to construct women as victims of their hormonal bodies in much the same way that theories of dysfunctional wombs did in other historical eras. A focus on the premenstrual phase as a vulnerable psychological time for women can be traced back to 1931 when ‘premenstrual tension’ (PMT) was first identified by American gynaecologist Robert Frank (Ussher 2003a). The symptoms making up PMT were attributed by Frank to an excess of the female sex hormone oestrogen. It should be remembered that sex hormones were only ‘discovered’ in 1905, enabling theories (and the existence) of premenstrual hormonal disorders (Ussher 2003a). Robert Frank describes women suffering from PMT as prone to ‘foolish and ill-considered actions’ (cited in Chrisler & Caplan 2002: 282) as ‘psychoneurotic’, characterised by ‘sexual tension’ and notes that their husbands ‘are to be pitied’ (cited in Figart 1996: 5). What was Frank’s suggested cure for these ‘symptoms’? He recommended either complete removal of the ovaries or radiation therapy upon the ovaries to decrease oestrogen production and ‘thus to restore order in both the home and the workplace’ (Figart 1996: 5). Some feminists have been suspicious about the political and historical conditions that surrounded the sudden scientific interest in PMT. According to Martin (1987) it is significant that Frank was writing immediately after the American Depression when women were under pressure to give up newfound gains in the paid labour market (obtained during the First World War) in the interests of giving jobs back to men. For many feminists the rise

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of PMT, a new condition giving scientific and medical backing to calls that women should be kept out of the workplace, was no mere coincidence. Feminists, along with others in the burgeoning areas of critical psychology and psychiatry, have been keen to focus on the social and historical roots of mental illness, arguing that different forms of madness are not individual pathologies but social constructions which regulate subjectivity (Ussher 2003a). It is only with the creation of new ‘conditions’, disorders and diagnostic labels that pathologies become visible, ‘real’ and subject to ‘treatment’. The creation of terms such as PMT served to bring the menstrual cycle (as pathology) into the realms of psychiatry, psychology and mental illness (Busfield 1996) and gave scientific experts the right to define ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ premenstrual behaviour. PMT was re-labelled premenstrual syndrome (PMS) in 1953 (Figart 1996). Feminists have argued that the favouring of the word ‘syndrome’ was an attempt to denote ‘an underlying disease process’ in women’s bodies and to further colonise the condition as a pathology whose definition, treatment and reality belonged firmly in the scientific and medical realms (Chrisler & Caplan 2002). It is again noteworthy that the revival of interest in premenstrual ‘disorders’ (now termed PMS) occurred during the 1950s – a period in which women were once again being encouraged to be ‘housewives’ and give up paid employment so that more jobs would be available to war veterans (Chrisler & Caplan 2002). It has been estimated that up to 95% of women have some form of PMS (Studd & Panay 2004) and thus (according to the medical model) ‘abnormal’ hormonal cycles. The number of symptoms associated with PMS is close on 200 and include both physiological and psychological items (Zeedyk & Raitt 1999). It is worth noting that so far no consensus actually exists among experts as to the existence and ‘reality’ of a ‘thing’ called PMS. Furthermore, the role of both biological factors (particularly hormones) and psychological ones remain obscure and unconfirmed (Stanton et al 2002). The range of symptoms nonetheless linked to PMS include poor concentration, impaired judgement, aggressive outbursts, tearfulness, mood swings, irritability, fluid retention, food cravings, acne, fatigue, anxiety and sadness. It is interesting to note the gendered nature of some of these symptoms – for instance, can you imagine food cravings, a heightened sex drive, and aggressive outbursts as ‘symptoms’ of a male disorder? (Chrisler & Caplan 2002). Reasoning surrounding PMS also bears some startling similarities to notions that were employed a century and more ago about women. Consider for example the following statement made in 1982: Amongst PMS women, increased libido is occasionally noticed in the pre-menstruum … All too often it is this nymphomanic urge in adolescents which is responsible for young girls running away from home, or custody, only to be found wandering in the park or following the boys. These girls can be helped, and their criminal career abruptly ended with hormone therapy (Dalton cited in Zeedyk & Raitt 1999: 133). There are also some remarkable and disturbing commonalities between the symptoms attributed to PMS and to hysteria (Chrisler & Caplan 2002). Both disorders have been characterised by a wide range of diffuse and nebulous symptoms that are poorly understood, so far unverifiable and not even agreed upon by professionals (Offman & Kleinplatz 2004; Schnall et al 2002; Studd & Panay 2004; Zeedyk & Raitt 1999;). Also, in both cases, the cause of the ‘disorders’ is solely attributed to the vagaries of the female body. Whereas previously it was the troublesome restless ‘womb’, now it’s those problematic and out-of-control female ‘hormones’.

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Chrisler and Caplan (2002) identify the 1970s as once again a period of heightened scientific and popular interest in PMS. They argue that this interest coincided with a backlash against the widespread gains made by the feminist movement of the 1970s. The establishment of PMS as ‘real’ within the popular imagination of the 1980s was achieved by two sensational murder trials in the United Kingdom in which the courts accepted PMS as a legitimate legal defence (Sveinsdòttir et al 2002). It was during this time that ‘PMS became a household term’ (Sveinsdòttir et al 2002: 414). PMS as a defence for murder PMS entered the British courtroom in the 1980s with two sensational murder trials. The first was the case of Sandie Smith (then known as Craddock) who in 1980 stabbed a co-worker to death in the bar where they both worked. She was charged with murder. At only age 28, Smith already had a long history of violent behaviour, and had more than 30 previous convictions for criminal assault and damage. While Smith was awaiting trial, her father observed that all of her offences had occurred in 28-day cycles, leading to an investigation of the possibility that her crimes were related to her menstrual cycle. Hormonal testing indicated that Smith suffered from a deficiency of progesterone and she was put on hormone replacement therapy. It was found that with regular injections of progesterone, her violent outbursts subsided. She pleaded guilty to manslaughter and in view of the medical evidence supporting her case (PMS diagnosis) she was sentenced to only three years’ probation, subject to her continuance of the hormonal therapy. The second case involved Christine English who in 1982 killed her lover, Barry Kitson, by crushing him with her car. He had been drinking in a pub, and when she arrived to pick him up, they began to argue, with Kitson slapping and punching her. English ‘snapped’ as he left the car, driving her car at him and pinning him against a telegraph pole, which killed him. Medical and psychiatric evidence was presented at the trial to show that English suffered from PMS. On the basis of the medical evidence, English’s plea of guilty to manslaughter, due to diminished responsibility, was accepted. She was given a one-year conditional discharge and banned from driving for a year. (Zeedyk & Raitt, (1999) Biology in the Courtroom: PMS in Legal Defences)

It was shortly after these murder trials that a group of American psychiatrists began the drive to establish PMS as an official psychiatric disorder by agitating for its inclusion within the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). This was only finally achieved in 1994 when premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) was included as a mental disorder within the DSM-IV (Figart, 1996). This event was marked by controversy and disagreement, with many women psychiatrists and mental health professionals fighting the inclusion of PMDD (Figart 1996). These lobby groups cited the inconclusivity, vagueness and lack of agreement about the nature, causes and ‘reality’ of the disorder as reasons why it should be excluded. Some also argued that the inclusion of PMDD as a psychiatric disorder would be stigmatising to all women (Figart 1996). It has been estimated that up to 40% of women fit the criteria for PMDD (Ussher 2003a) and would thus currently be diagnosable as mentally ‘ill’. Women with PMDD have also been further pathologised and identified as more ‘at risk’ of other psychiatric disorders, particularly depression and anxiety disorders, and links between postpartum depression and PMDD have also been postulated (Kim et al 2004; Sugawara et al 1997). Psychologists have been active in

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Symptoms of PMDD ❍ marked depressed mood, feelings of hopelessness and self-deprecating thoughts ❍ marked anxiety, tension, feeling ‘on edge’ ❍ marked emotional sensitivity (feeling suddenly sad or tearful) ❍ persistent and marked anger, irritability and conflicts with others ❍ decreased interest in usual activities ❍ difficulty concentrating ❍ lethary and marked lack of energy ❍ marked change in appetite – overeating or food cravings ❍ hypersomnia or insomnia ❍ subjective sense of being overwhelmed or ‘out of control’ ❍ other physical symptoms including headaches, breast tenderness, ‘bloating’ or weight-gain (DSM-IV (1994))

trying to isolate features or traits of a ‘PMS personality-type’. So far, factors such as coping style (Warren & Baker 1992), locus of control (Fryer et al 1999), low self esteem (Maddocks & Reid 1992), higher self-reported stress (Stanton et al 2002; Fryer et al 1999), and dissatisfaction with romantic relationships (Ryser & Feinauer 1992) have been investigated. The search for a ‘PMS personality-type’ has however not been successful and some researchers have actually conceded that there simply is no one ‘type’ of woman who experiences PMS (Fryer et al 1999). Despite the overwhelming use of psychopharmacologic drugs and hormonal agents as treatments for PMS, psychologists have also attempted a range of different therapies in the interests of ‘treating’ the condition. These include cognitive-behavioural therapy (Hunter 2003) and newer woman-centred approaches (Ussher 2002b). A feminist psychologist tackles PMS Jane Ussher, a prominent feminist psychologist, argues that psychology has erred in its approach towards PMS by insisting on conceptualising it within a positivist framework which sees the condition as ‘a fixed entity’ (Ussher 2002a: 310) situated within the individual woman (Ussher 2003b). She does not deny that many women do in fact experience emotional and physical premenstrual changes (2002a), but she does, however, take issue with the way these changes have been pathologised and made to function as the source of women’s wider unhappiness and distress. Ussher (2002a; 2002b; 2003b) proposes a material-discursiveintrapsychic (MDI) model as useful for conceptualising PMS. According to the MDI model, PMS is not an internal ‘thing’ but is rather the result of an interplay of material, discursive and intrapsychic factors. Interestingly, in one of her studies Ussher (2003b) shows how PMS is not discursively situated exclusively within the individual woman but always comes to exist as a relational issue. In a set of interviews with 36 women who met diagnostic criteria for PMDD, women’s subjective experience of PMS and their own meaning-making about the ‘disorder’ were investigated. The following three themes were identified: PMS as emotional reactivity. One of the key ‘symptoms’ of PMS is heightened emotional reactivity. Ussher (2003b) notes, however, that it is only when emotions are expressed in relationships that they are described as ‘problematic’. Women describe ‘bad’ emotional

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Material–discursive-intrapsychic model The MDI model proposes that there is an ongoing interaction between material, discursive and intrapsychic factors and that these combine to produce the emotions, behaviours and ‘symptoms’ that come to be diagnosed as PMS or PMDD. The MDI model recognises the importance of all three levels, without privileging one above the other. Material factors: These include factors that operate at the level of the physical body (hormones, neurotransmitters), and at a societal or institutional level (medical and psychiatric practice which institutionalise the diagnosis and treatment of premenstrual experiences such as PMS). Discursive factors: These are centred on the social and linguistic domains – language, ideology, culture and power. For instance, the discursive construction of PMS, of mental health and illness, and of gender, would all be relevant to an analysis of PMS. Intrapsychic factors: These operate at the individual and psychological level and include factors which would have traditionally been the focus of psychological research on PMS. These would include, for example, attributions for symptoms, low self-esteem, depression and the impact of previous abuse or neglect. It might also include an analysis of psychological ‘defences’, such as denial, repression, projection and splitting. (Ussher, (2002b) ‘A woman-centred psychological intervention for premenstrual symptoms, drawing on cognitive-behavioural and narrative therapy’ Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, 9: 319–331.)

reactions chiefly as irritation, anger and intolerance. Note that these outbursts are reactions to the actions of others – they are thus only meaningful within relational contexts. Ussher notes that women condemned themselves repeatedly for these ‘outbursts’ and were very concerned with the impact of their behaviours on their partners or children. In fact, the primary reason why women in the study sought treatment was ‘the need to protect others from ‘PMS’, or to save the relationship’ (392). Interestingly, women only identified PMS in so far as others were affected by its ‘symptoms’. This immediately challenges views of PMS as a problem confined to the individual, de-contextualised woman. PMS as a sensitised response to specific problems in relationships. Women also described PMS as the expression of otherwise repressed emotions associated with more widespread problems in relationships, specifically with partners and children. The ‘short-fuse’ metaphor was consistently employed to describe incidents which were negatively received premenstrually but tolerated at other times. Women all described ‘losing it’ in relation to domestic matters, an area in which ‘they were normally expected to have unending patience and to take the lion’s share of tasks’ (393). They also spoke of a build-up of frustration and irritation over the whole month which was ‘released’ premenstrually. This release was always followed by guilt, self-criticism and a splitting off of the ‘bad’, ‘aggressive’ self. Coping with PMS by withdrawing from relationships – and self-pathologising this withdrawal. Strengthening the view of PMS as a relational phenomenon, women reported that

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withdrawing from social situations and relationships was the most effective way of dealing with PMS. Women spoke repeatedly of ‘wanting to be alone’, ‘without demands’ and desiring ‘some peace’. When women were able to be alone, they reported that ‘the PMS effectively disappeared’ (395). However, these women were so focussed on constantly striving to meet the needs of others that they themselves pathologised the desire to be alone and positioned it as a ‘symptom’ of PMS. Ussher (2003b) concludes that the ‘pathological’ symptoms of PMS can be reframed as normal and logical responses to being overburdened within the matrix of expectations, responsibilities and sacrifices that ideal femininity (and motherhood) often entail. For instance, women are often ‘supposed’ to take care of others, be patient, long-suffering and without needs and desires of their own. Women in the study managed this most of the time, only finally ‘snapping’ in the premenstrual phase. Problematically, attributing these moments of rebellion and resistance to a biological pathology does nothing to address the underlying causes of women’s unhappiness. Instead, woman’s body becomes ‘the problem’ and in this process others (and social structures of gender) are absolved. Mothering bodies Psychology has been active in establishing itself as one of the key contributors towards a ‘science of motherhood’ (Ussher 1989) in which various experts have proclaimed (and dictated) what constitutes ‘normal’ mothering and ‘good’ adaptation to the maternal career. Pregnancy, for example, has been regarded by psychologists as a ‘critical point’ (Valentine 1982: 243) or crisis period during which women proceed through a range of developmental tasks en route to ‘adapting’ successfully to maternity (Gloger-Tippelt 1983; Leifer 1977; Valentine 1982). Those who do not achieve these tasks or proceed through pregnancy and motherhood in other ways have been labelled ‘immature’, psychopathological and ‘unfeminine’. For example, nausea in pregnancy has been hypothesised by some experts as an indicator of ‘problems with female role adjustment’ (Ussher 1989: 79). The ways in which women do or do not ‘adjust’ to pregnancy has been linked to their subsequent adaptation to motherhood and ‘attachment’ to their infants (Davids & Holden 1970; Fonagy et al 1991; Leifer 1977; Martin et al 1999). Psychologists have developed countless ways of ascertaining women’s ‘adjustment’ to motherhood through measures of maternal attitudes, maternal competence, self-confidence, coping style, measures of role conflict, attachment to the infant and perception of the infant. Problematically, motherhood has been conceptualised by most psychologists as a unitary, cohesive ‘something’ that is to be achieved by women (with the ever-present threat that if they do not achieve this mythical state, they will be ‘damaging’ their infants). Driving most psychological work on mothering has been the dependency needs of infants. This has served to define and proclaim the responsibilities of mothers towards ‘their’ infants regardless of the mother’s own needs and situation (Nicolson 1998). Missing from most psychological research is women’s own perspectives and interpretations of becoming and being a mother, with all its contradiction, ambivalence and turbulence. The expert gaze of psychology has been particularly focussed on women whose transition to motherhood is constructed as pathological or dysfunctional. Women diagnosed as postnatally depressed have been the recipients of countless theories, treatments and interventions (Nicolson 1998; Stanton et al 2002). It has been estimated that the prevalence

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of postnatal depression (PND) ranges from 8% to 20% in the first six months after childbirth (Ogrodniczuk & Piper 2003). Others claim that at least 10% of women have a depressive illness in the postnatal period, and up to 50% of women suffer from postnatal blues (temporary depression) in the first 10 days after birth (Cox et al 1982). Postnatal blues and postpartum psychosis have both been confirmed as unique kinds of depression that are not reducible to general depression. PND has not. Because rates of depression in childbearing women are about the same as in non-childbearing women, some have questioned whether PND deserves to be identified as a separate syndrome (Stanton et al 2002; Ushher 1992). Although there is a widespread belief that unsettled ‘hormones’ following pregnancy and birth are responsible for PND, there is no consistent evidence to support this notion (Stanton et al. 2002). Pregnancy has been regarded by psychologists as a As with PMS and PMDD, the very notion of ‘critical point’ or crisis period during which women proceed through a range of developmental tasks en PND as a reproductive syndrome is open to route to ‘adapting’ successfully to maternity. questioning (Ussher 1992). A chief concern of psychologists in relation to PND has been ascertaining the degree of ‘damage’ that such mothers can cause in their infants, for example in terms of attachment disorders (Murray & Cooper 1997), ‘failure to thrive’ (Drewett et al 2004), abusive parenting (Sagami et al 2004) and longerterm tendencies to anti-social behaviour (Hay et al 2003). Little effort is made to understand the social/cultural roots of women’s distress after the birth of a child.

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Feminist psychological approaches to PND Feminist psychologists have been active in critiquing mainstream psychology’s approach to PND and have offered various alternative theories and approaches. For example, Paula Nicolson (1998, 1999) argues that depression in mothers with infants is not a pathology but a normal response to the realisation that the realities of mothering/motherhood differ from the patriarchal myth or ideology of natural, instinctual, fulfilling motherhood. Nicolson (1998) argues that becoming a mother entails a series of losses – including loss of the old self, loss of time, loss of independence, loss of control and loss of sexuality. Women are not allowed to acknowledge the ‘normalcy’ of feelings of loss and grief and are instead ‘supposed’ to be happy and content. Having a baby also invariably changes women’s intimate relationships with their partners – many women report feeling ‘let down’ by their men and not adequately supported (Nicolson 1998; Wolf 2001). It is perhaps interesting to note that in the United States, men who claim to believe in women’s equality do only four

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The myth of the maternal instinct The concept of a ‘maternal instinct’ is a taken-for-granted truth in contemporary Western society. This notion refers to the assumption that all women desire motherhood and will adapt ‘naturally’ to its demands. Underpinning most current political and research agendas related to childbirth, motherhood, fertility, contraception and abortion is the assumed ‘truth’ of the maternal instinct. Basically ‘the maternal instinct’ says: ❍ that all women have a biological drive towards conceiving and giving birth to children; ❍ this is a precursor to the drive to nurture these children; ❍ the skills/capacities required to care for young children emerge or evolve immediately after the birth without the need for training or guidance; and ❍ the existence of these skills and capacities is evidence of innate femininity. Such beliefs disadvantage women because they define what is ‘natural’ and ‘normal’ behaviour for women, and women who do not function in such ways are automatically seen as ‘deviant’, ‘unfeminine’ or ‘disordered’. These notions also place sole responsibility for childcare upon women (men, the state and society at large share little responsibility for the care of infants). Finally, such beliefs also reject the validity of differences among women in their expectations, desires and experiences of motherhood as well as their life choices in general. (Nicolson, (1999) The Myth of the Maternal Instinct)

minutes more domestic labour daily than do so-called more ‘traditional’ men (Wolf 2001). Lack of support from a partner has been found by numerous studies to be a contributing factor in PND (Nicolson 1998). Becoming a mother may also be ‘the most gender-enforcing experience in the lives of many women’ (Fox 2001: 374) as traditional gender roles increase in saliency and for most couples a clear movement is made towards more traditional patterns of household labour after the birth of a first child (Fox 2001; Walzer 1996). Birthing bodies – psychology does a disappearing act What about psychology and the African woman’s body? There is very little research or literature addressing this question. Quite a lot of research (dating back to early colonialism) has historically investigated the psychology of ‘the African’ – in terms of personality, attitudes and cognitive development (eg. De Ridder 1961; Sachs 1937; Wober 1975). This research, however, has been overwhelmingly centred on the African male. African women are invariably absent and invisible in these studies. Even in the acclaimed study by Alexander Butchart (1998) which analyses the construction of ‘the African body’ in colonial socio-medical practices, the bodies of black women are conspicuously absent. On the final page to the book, in a note to the postscript, Butchart himself acknowledges this silence and refers to ‘the body of the African woman’ as one of the issues that ‘this book ignores’ (185). Mama (1995) points out that black women have been almost completely disregarded in psychology, by both white and black researchers. Psychology has tended to study ‘the Negro’, ‘the colonised’ and ‘the African’ as if they were unitary (male) personality types devoid of gender.

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Psychologists traditionally have not had a great deal (if anything at all) to say about childbirth as an experience. Perhaps this is because birth is assumed to be situated solely within the realm of the biological body – a psychology of birth might thus seem a contradiction in terms. Often the antenatal period (pregnancy) and the postnatal period (as PND) are examined, but birth as event and experience is simply mysteriously disappeared from consideration (e.g. see Stanton et al 2002). Not surprisingly, thus far the only systematic way psychologists have approached birth is in terms of the possible psychological disorders associated with it. For example, there has been a spate of recent research interest in the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following childbirth (Allen 1998; Ayers & Pickering 2001; Bailham & Joseph 2003; Lyons 1998; Soet et al 2003). This work remains obsessed with identifying ‘individual risk factors’ that might explain why some women are profoundly distressed following birth. The assumption is that distress after childbirth is abnormal and that the problem must lie within the individual woman. Little or no attention is paid to the alienating conditions in which many women are increasingly expected to give birth in the twenty-first century. A great deal of literature has criticised the dominant Western medical model of birth in which women have become increasingly incidental to the birth process (medical ‘experts’ are now centre-stage), are subjected to a range of often unnecessary medical interventions (including induction of labour, assisted delivery by forceps or vacuum extraction, episiotomy, caesarean section) and are often left feeling (justifiably) disempowered, shocked, cheated and ‘traumatised’ (Foster 1995; Kitzinger 1992; Michaelson 1988; Nelson 1996; Oakley 1980; Sterk 1996).

The medical model of birth The medical model of birth is the dominant way of approaching birth in Western societies today. Thus, most women give birth in hospitals assisted by a range of different machines, medical drugs and medical interventions. The doctor (usually an obstetrician or gynaecologist) is the ‘expert’ who tells the birthing woman if she is birthing adequately. This model has become taken-for-granted as the only (safe) way to go about the business of childbirth in modern Western society. The caesarean section rate might be regarded as a useful indicator of the degree to which birth is ‘medicalised’ within any given society. In South Africa, the c-section rate in private hospitals was over 50% in 1996 and noted to be growing. This is one of the highest statistics in the world. In a South African study done in 1998 by Katherine Humphreys, 20 middle-class women who gave birth in private hospitals were interviewed before and after the birth of their babies. She found that all of the births had medical intervention, all of the women made use of drugs and medical equipment. This was in spite of the fact that most of the women had stated preference for a ‘natural’ birth in the pre-birth interview. Most of the women described their births as different from what they had expected and spoke of motherhood as a ‘shock’.

Increasingly feminists in the so-called ‘First World’ are critiquing and problematising the medical model of birth and calling for a return to more ‘natural’ childbirth, often epitomised as homebirth. It is thus perhaps ironic that, at the same time, many activists, researchers and practitioners in the ‘developing’ world are calling for increased medical intervention in childbirth (e.g. Esen 2002; Kitsa & Ngozwana 1997). The way in which birth proceeds is

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enormously dependent on factors such as geopolitical location and class. Poor women giving birth in developing countries are clearly faced with completely different problems, issues and needs than Western women. Maternal mortality indices continue to be the health indicator showing the greatest discrepancy between developed and developing nations (Abouzahr & Wardlaw 2001). South Africa’s own maternity system is shot through with inequality, difference and contradiction. For example, while South African medical schools produce some of the world’s most renowned specialists in obstetrics and gynaecology (Burns 2001), at the same time deep divisions exist between private and public health facilities and resources. The result is that most of the skill, expertise, technology and resources remain entrenched within the private sector. Within private hospitals, artificial intervention has been cited as between 50% and 80% (King in Humphreys 1998) and women within these hospitals have been described as more likely to receive caesarean section than any other group of women in the world (Burns 2001). This stands in stark contrast to the treatment of women within the public health-care system, where women are described as rarely offered any form of pain relief (Abrahams & Mvo 1998; Jewkes & Mvo 1997) and where rates of caesarean section are substantially lower than in private hospitals (Matshidze & Richter 1998). African birth in transition It was already noted in 1990 by Beverley Chalmers in African Birth that childbirth in Africa is undergoing major cultural transition. According to Chalmers (1990) there are no longer ‘pure’ and distinct traditional African groups. Many urban Africans are ‘totally Westernised’, evidenced by shifting practices in matters such as childbirth. Traditionally, birth in Africa took place at home, the birthing woman attended by trusted female members of her family or community. Increasingly, births (for all women) are now taking place within hospitals or clinics. Chalmers acknowledges that this is no doubt medically safer but doubts that hospitals can provide ‘the psychological safety of a traditional home birth’ (39). Many African women have discarded traditional beliefs and practices pertaining to birth and increasingly state preferences for medical intervention and high-tech births. A South African psychological study done by Fouche, Heyns, Fourie, Schoon and Bam (1998) concurs that the experience of African women in childbirth is undergoing a transition ‘from the integrative and traditional to the more fragmented and technological’ (73). They found that 80% of the African women in their study stated a preference for a hospital birth and 77% desired pharmacological

Psychological explanations of PTSD after birth avoid the contextual factors embedded in birthing practices and instead look to ‘vulnerability’ factors within individual women, such as trait anxiety (Czarnocka & Slade 2000), a history of receiving psychiatric or psychological counselling (Wijma et al 1997) and ‘dysfunctional’ attitudes (Nightingale & Williams 2000). Some researchers have suggested a link between disappointing birth experiences and PND (Saisto et al 2001; Oakley 1980, Ogrodniczuk & Piper 2003) and there has been quite a lot of research which has explored women’s psychological response to childbirth practices such as emergency caesarean section and instrumental deliveries (Durik et al 2000; Maclean et al 2000; Ryding et al 2000; Wijma et al 2002). Unfortunately most of this research is concerned with associating individual factors, such as prenatal ‘fear of childbirth’ and general anxiety, to distress after childbirth. Once again, contextual, relational and structural factors are silenced. Tokophobia, defined as ‘an unreasoning dread of childbirth’ (Hofberg &

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Brockington 2000: 83) was classified as a ‘disorder’ for the first time in 2000. Women who request caesarean sections for personal reasons are increasingly being constructed as suffering from tokophobia and so-called ‘fear of childbirth’ has been linked to a range of dysfunctional psychological characteristics, including general anxiety, low self-esteem, depression, lack of support and dissatisfaction with partners (Saisto & Halmesmäki 2003). The ability of psychology to pathologise women’s reproductive experiences seems endless. Surprisingly, feminist psychologists have been virtually silent on the topic of birth. A random search of feminist texts on psychology reveals an alarming degree of avoidance and silence (eg. see introductory texts by Donelson & Gullahorn 1977; Gergen & Davis 1997; O’ Lear 1977; Stainton Rogers & Stainton Rogers 2001; Unger 1998; Walsh 1987). There are a few exceptions. Margaret Matlin, a feminist psychologist writing in 1987 noted that childbirth was a topic that was ‘nearly ignored … and taboo’ (360). Her call to give more serious research attention to the psychology of birth has unfortunately not been well heeded.

Theorising the body: feminist approaches Woman’s body – no longer woman’s destiny (or pathology) Feminism has always been at least implicitly about (sexed) bodies. We have traced in this chapter how the female body has been repeatedly constructed in Western society as the site of pathology, madness and irrationality. Feminism arose precisely to counter these constructions. Initially, feminists were dominantly concerned with issues of equality – they wanted women to have equal rights to education, politics and the professions. According to Offen (2000: 32) feminist arguments in the 1700s were already referring to the ‘social construction’ of relations between the sexes and showing understanding of the concept that we now call ‘gender’ (so much for the originality of social constructionism). In order to argue against beliefs that women were naturally inferior because of their biology, feminists had to come up with a way to separate the biological body (to be later known as ‘sex’) from the cultural/social construction of being a man or a woman (later called ‘gender’). Although feminists have usually agreed upon the general principle of equality between the sexes, there has, from the beginning, been an underlying tension as to whether this equality should be one of sameness or of difference (DiQuinzio 1999). Offen (2000) labels these tendencies individualistic (sameness) and relational (difference) and claims that the history of Western feminist thought is structured by these two competing and distinct lines of argument. The so-called ‘second-wave’ of feminism dating from the 1960s galvanised preceding feminist arguments about the difference between the biological body and the social relations between the sexes into a construct that is now widely known as the sex-gender distinction. The construction of this distinction provided a critical basis for the development of feminist thought and enabled feminists to analyse the development of gendered identities ‘separate from biology’ (Webster 2002: 191; Young 2002). It allowed feminists to argue that biological facts do not necessarily dictate women’s roles, functions and capacities in society. Gender was not inevitably tied to the body (Bigwood 1991). Woman’s body was no longer Woman’s destiny. As a result of this development, feminist researchers got very busy studying, dissecting and theorising gender; ‘sex’ and the body were dismissed, ignored and overwritten as fixed biological ‘facts’ prior to culture/discourse/sociality (Shildrick & Price 1999; Webster).

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Table 14.1 Two competing historical tendencies in feminism Relational (difference between men and women)

Individualist (sameness)

Emphasise women’s rights as women

Emphasise women’s rights as individual human rights

Value the uniquely womanly experiences of menstruation, pregnancy and birth

Downplay, dismiss or regard female reproductive processes as inherently oppressive

Emphasise women as embodied, female individuals

Emphasise the individual, who is effectively gender-neutral and disembodied

Value and see strength in ‘feminine’ ways of being and relating

Femininity is oppressive and to be transcended

Embodiment is central

Denies significance of embodiment

Based on complementarity notion of the sexes

Sex should be irrelevant – individual as basic unit of analysis

Equality-in-difference

Equality-in-sameness

Linked to ideology of essential motherhood

Avoids or denigrates motherhood

Positive evaluation of women’s ‘difference’

Negative evaluation of women’s ‘difference’

Example: Ellen Key (1914) The Renaissance of Motherhood

Example: Betty Friedan (1963) The Feminine Mystique

Understandably, feminists were generally keen to disappear ‘the body’ and to distinguish women from ‘fleshiness’ (Witz 2000: 11) and historical tendencies that had constructed woman as saturated by her body. Feminists that tried to theorise gender together with the body or who gave primacy to female reproductive processes and mothering were often immediately charged with accusations of ‘essentialism’. Amidst a climate of feminist somatophobia (Kirby 1991: 10) sometimes mere mention of the body was enough to warrant these charges (Witz 2000). Not surprisingly, issues of mothering/reproduction have been points of tension for feminism. DiQuinzio (1999) identifies two main strategies deployed in ‘second-wave’ feminism concerning motherhood: ❍ avoiding the issue totally or minimising its significance in women’s lives through simplistic analyses; and ❍ trying to deal with the issue of motherhood and risking the recuperation of ‘essential motherhood’. Many well-known feminists of the time were scathing about female reproductive processes. For example, Shulamith Firestone, a prominent feminist writing in the 1970s, describes pregnancy as ‘barbaric’ and believed that the liberation of women lay in future technological interventions which would put an end to women’s bodily role in reproduction (DiQuinzio 1999; Williams & Bendelow 1998). The second strategy appeared in later phases of the

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‘second-wave’ and included the work of so-called ‘French feminists’ such as Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous and Julia Kristeva and the work of feminists such as Adrienne Rich (1976) and Sara Ruddick (1980). Rich’s book Of Woman Born would go on to be a major classic in feminist scholarship. Rich (1976) makes a critical distinction between motherhood as experience and as institution and argues that male control of women’s reproduction and women’s mothering is the founding point of patriarchy. She goes on to argue that challenging the institution of motherhood requires a full and complex recognition of woman’s body – of which motherhood is only one (critical) dimension. She passionately calls for women to ‘repossess’ their bodies, a feat which she claims will result in a revolution far more radical and transformative to society than any other in its history. Ultimately, Rich’s (1976) account, however, risks reproducing essential motherhood, for despite her disclaimers, the female body once again appears to be thinkable only as a reproductive body (DiQuinzio 1999). This is largely an inevitable consequence of the feminist terms within which Rich was theorising – ie. the sex/gender distinction. Corporeal feminism Inspired by many intellectual currents, including French feminism, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis and existential phenomenology, some feminists have recently come to question the taken-for-granted binary pairs of sex/gender, body/mind, nature/culture, difference/sameness. Many have now taken up the tricky task of trying to re-theorise the body and subjectivity apart from these binaries. This current of feminist theorising is known as ‘corporeal feminism’ (i.e. Butler 1990; Gatens 1996; Grosz 1994; 1993; Kirby 1997) and draws on a range of theories and positions. What this diverse group of feminist theorists have in common is a desire to move the body ‘from the periphery to the center of analysis’ (Grosz 1994: ix). The starting-point for the development of a feminist theory of embodiment seems to be the problematisation of the sex/gender distinction (e.g. Butler 1990; Gatens 1996; Moi 1999; Webster 2002). Why has this distinction increasingly been rejected by feminists? Predominantly because it assumes ‘sex’ (also ‘body’ and ‘nature’) to be pre-social entities that serve as surfaces or containers for cultural meanings and inscriptions (Webster 2002). Marking sex/body/nature as pre-social means that they are regarded as intrinsically unchanging, fixed ‘truths’. Increasingly it has been acknowledged that it is often terms which parody as ‘natural’ that hide a multitude of ideological baggage and which need to be problematised. The sex/gender distinction fails to interrogate the sense in which sex/body/ nature are all products of cultural construction and also fails to take seriously the sense in which we are all embodied beings.

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Table 14.2 Four theoretical schools of feminism Social difference feminism

Sexual difference feminism

Diversity feminism

Deconstruction feminism

Preoccupied with revaluing ‘woman’ or ‘the feminine’

Sexuality as discursively mediated

Response to social difference feminism

Notion of ‘the individual’ and of Woman is questioned – identities/ subjectivities as internally splintered

Interested in the ways of knowing/being that flow from women’s experiences

Sexual difference as primary criticalanalytical concept

Demands for recognition of multiple differences between women – i.e. class, race, sexual orientation

Seeks to disrupt and dismantle all preconstituted categories – race, class, sex, gender

Geared towards accessing the true (if non-biological) nature and social reality of women

Draws heavily upon psychoanalytic theories

Whiteness and ethnocentrism of Western feminist theories of gender, sexual difference & subjectivity scrutinized

Attention focussed on the theorisation of discursive relations of power, language games, significations and performances

Assume coherence of gender identity i.e. persons are predominantly male or female

Sexual difference located in semiotic (feminine) zone of the pre-verbal, preOedipal maternal body which precedes the (masculine) zone of the symbolic order

Emphasises differences, pluralities, multiplicity in the theorising of women

Embrace flux and instability and forego notions of free agency, autonomy and selfhood

Semiotic and symbolic used to mark sexually differentiated forms of language

Reject idea of unitary group called ‘women’ or singular gendered category

There are no prediscursive sites or foundations for sex, gender (or race)

Geared towards subverting phallocentric symbolic order via irony, literary devices and ‘strategic essentialism’

Seeks the recognition and articulation of previously submerged, negated and silenced ‘others’

Identity is an effect of discursive ordering

Example: Julia Kristeva (1980) Desire in Language

Example: Patricia Collins (1991) Black Feminist Thought

Example: Judith Butler (1990) Gender Trouble

Example: Nancy Hartsock (1987) The Feminist Standpoint

Source: Dietz (2003) Current Controversies in Feminist Theory.

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Table 14.3 Dominant feminist approaches to the body Social constructionist feminism

Sexual difference feminism

Committed to the notion that subjectivity is socially constructed

Body is crucial to understanding women’s psychical and social existence

Body as a biological object whose representation and functioning is political

Body as the political, social and cultural object par excellence

Retention of the mind/body dualism

Aim to transcend mind/body dualism

Body as fixed, precultural and ahistorical

Body is no longer understood as ahistorical and acultural

Body is the base for the working of ideology and discourse

Body is interwoven with, and constitutive of, systems of meaning, ideology and discourse

Distinguish between the ‘real’, biological body and the body as it is socially constructed

There is no presocial body – there are only bodies as social and discursive objects

Task: give new meanings to the body/ biological functions

Focus on the lived body – the body as represented and used in specific ways in particular cultures

Sex/gender distinction is still operative

Suspicious of the sex/gender distinction

Body itself as irrelevant to political transformation

The body as the crucial site of contestation in economic, political, sexual and intellectual struggles

Examples of social constructionist feminists: Juliet Mitchell, Nancy Chodorow, Michéle Barrett

Examples of sexual difference feminists: Luce Irigaray, Jane Gallop, Helene Cixous, Moira Gatens, Judith Butler, Vicki Kirby, Elizabeth Grosz

Source: Grosz (1994) Volatile Bodies

Judith Butler: sex was gender all along ‘Sex’ is, thus, not simply what one has, or a static description of what one is: it will be one of the norms by which the ‘one’ becomes viable at all, that which qualifies a body for life within the domain of cultural intelligibility (Butler 1993: 2). The writings of Judith Butler (1990; 1993), drawing heavily upon the post-structuralist work of Foucault, have radically ‘troubled’ feminist theory through a questioning of the feminist boundaries drawn between sex (biology) and gender (social) (Kuhlmann & Babitsch 2002). Butler (1990) argues that the body (and sex) are as culturally constructed as gender. In fact, for Butler, sex was always gender all along and any distinction between the two is meaningless. According to Butler, there is no body, or sex, or nature that exists outside of a cultural system of meanings. The very ‘stuff’ of bodies is materialised through the cultural norm of ‘sex’ (Butler 1993) which forms male and female bodies in particular ways. This ‘formulation’ is effected by regulatory discourses (ie. of masculinity, femininity,

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heterosexuality, compulsory motherhood) which in effect produce certain kinds of bodies (Hughes & Witz 1997). Such ‘formulation’ is interestingly displayed in an empirical study done by Karin Martin (1998) in which a total of 112 children in the age range of 3–5 years were observed at five different preschools in America. Children were observed three times a week for a total of eight months. Martin (1998) found that children’s gendered bodies (as boys and girls) were in effect produced by various disciplinary practices in the schools. Through these practices, girls’ bodies were constructed as more docile than boys’. For example, girls were encouraged to pursue ‘formal’ behaviours – eg. raising one’s hand, sitting upright in a chair, covering one’s nose and mouth when sneezing (82% of all formal behaviours were done by girls), while boys were allowed and encouraged to pursue relaxed behaviours – i.e. crawling on the floor, yelling, running through the school, in ways that girls were not (80% of all relaxed behaviours were done by boys). Additionally, Martin (1998) found that the disciplining of voices was gendered – girls were told to be quiet or to repeat a request in a quieter, ‘nicer’ voice three times more often than were boys. This study shows intriguingly how the bodies of girls’ and boys’ become particular kinds of (sexed) bodies according to dominant normative discourses of masculinity and femininity. Butler’s work, although groundbreaking for feminist theory, has been criticised for ‘reducing’ the body to cultural practices, language and discourse (Kuhlmann & Babitsch 2002), for its abstraction and failure to produce ‘a concrete … materialist understanding of the body’ (Moi 1999: 31) and for treating the substance of the body as merely a regulatory fiction. Disappointment has been expressed that her account is not ‘fleshy’ enough; she fails to fully engage with the ‘real’ flesh ’n bones body – a criticism commonly and all too easily directed at attempts to think/theorise bodies (Keane & Rosengarten 2002). Elizabeth Grosz – laying the ground for a corporeal feminism Elizabeth Grosz’s Volatile Bodies of 1994 has become one of the classic texts of ‘corporeal feminism’. Grosz suggests that a corporeal feminism should proceed through: ❍ rejecting the concept of the body as an object (the dominant ‘scientific’ approach to the body); ❍ rejecting the idea of the body as an instrument/tool/machine – as a possession or ‘property of a subject’ (8); ❍ rejecting the notion that the body is simply a vehicle of expression; ❍ avoiding dichotomous thinking which divides the subject into two separate categories of ‘body’ and ‘mind’; ❍ insisting that corporeality no longer be tied to one sex (female) or to one race (black); ❍ refusing singular models of the body which construct a normative type of body against which other bodies are judged; ❍ avoiding essentialist accounts of the body; ❍ thinking the relation between biological/psychological, inside/outside in new ways; and ❍ regarding the body as ‘threshold’ concept indeterminately placed ‘at the pivotal point of binary pairs’ (23). Grosz identifies two dominant approaches to theorising the body, which she identifies as ‘inscriptive’ (outside-in) and ‘the lived body’ (inside-out). Inscriptive approaches (derived

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from theorists such as Nietzsche and Foucault) regard the body as an inscriptive surface for coercive ‘body writing’ (141) or marking performed by various institutions (prisons, schools, hospitals, psychiatric institutions) and regulatory discourses (heterosexuality, masculinity, femininity). In this approach the body is: … a text to be marked, traced, written upon by various regimes of institutional (discursive and non-discursive) power (Grosz 1994: 116). Bodies are also marked by more ‘voluntary’ procedures such as life-styles (i.e. being a ‘Goth’, a vegetarian, a ‘punk’) and habitual practices. Notice that many of the various procedures of ‘body marking’ are actively sought out by people; they become ‘techniques of selfproduction’ (143) whereby we make ourselves into certain kinds of selves/bodies. Bodies are thus inscribed (from the outside) by systems of power but also, at the same time, power ‘produces the subject’s desires and pleasure’ (146). Inscriptive approaches argue that all of us are caught up in such modes of corporeal production. The second approach, labelled ‘the lived body’ is the focus of phenomenological versions of the body. We will be addressing the usefulness of the concept of ‘the lived body’ for feminism in the following section. Simone de Beauvoir – the body is a situation The body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp on the world and a sketch of our projects (De Beauvoir cited in Moi 1999: 59). Simone de Beauvoir is widely acknowledged as the founding ‘mother’ of modern feminism. Her classic text The Second Sex, published in 1949, grounded and inspired feminist writing of the ‘second-wave’. Her famous dictum, ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’ (De Beauvoir 1989: 267) has been interpreted as one of the first elaborations of a sex/gender type differentiation. De Beauvoir’s work has been the target of countless misinterpretations (largely due to the horrific quality of the English translation of The Second Sex) and her work is often prematurely dismissed by contemporary feminists (Moi 1999; Simons 1989). De Beauvoir’s theory of the body (drawing heavily on the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty) has recently received renewed attention (Fishwick 2002; Moi 1999). According to De Beauvoir, the body is not a passive object or merely a vehicle of expression: the body is a situation. It should be noted that claiming that the body is a situation is not quite the same as meaning that the body is always in a particular situation, although that also would be quite true. ‘The body both is a situation and is placed within other situations’ (Moi 1999: 65). The body as situation is the product of both facticity and freedom (Young 2002). Facticity refers to the material facts of one’s body and its location within a given environment. For example, any specific body has a particular size, sex, age, muscle ratio, skin colour and set of facial characteristics and lives in a particular context – crowded by other people, in a township, anchored by gravity, located within certain geographical features, hearing particular languages, positively connected to other human beings and/or animals – or not (Young 2002). All these concrete material facts, of bodily existence and social environment, make up a person’s facticity (Young 2002). The materiality of the body is thus taken to be a ‘fact’ within De Beauvoir’s approach (unlike Butler’s version of body/materiality). The facts of the body are however not tied inevitably to any particular social/cultural meaning. Additionally, a person is (relatively) free to make meaning from this facticity and to live it in particular ways. Our subjectivity

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From the onset of puberty the female body assumes the status of ‘object’ and ‘woman comes to look upon her body as a sexual object for others and for herself’ (Arp 1995: 169).

is constructed out of the way(s) that we live, experience and make meaning of our (always embodied) situation. According to Kruks (1990: 13), subjectivity ‘emerges in the way we live our body, our gender, our family and our wider social and economic relations, and our relation to their past’. De Beauvoir, however, did recognise that there are constraints on freedom and that social institutions (legal, economic, cultural) can structure, limit and even suppress our freedom (Kruks 2001). For example, De Beauvoir developed an impressive analysis of women’s particular relation to embodiment in The Second Sex. Merleau-Ponty (speaking for universal ‘man’) argued: ‘I am my body’ (cited in Kruks 1990: 12) signalling a rejection of the mind/body dualism. De Beauvoir’s corrective was: ‘Woman, like man, is her body: but her body is something other than her’ (cited in Arp 1995: 166). What does this mean? What can it mean to be other than oneself and for one’s body to be other? De Beauvoir’s argument is that women’s relationship to their bodies is one of alienation. Woman, unlike man, experiences her body as a separate ‘alien’ thing, divorced somehow from herself (Arp 1995). According to De Beauvoir, bodily alienation in women is produced by the general situation (under patriarchy) in which woman finds herself: she is repeatedly cast as object for man and as his ‘Other’ (Kruks 1998). From puberty onwards the female body assumes the status of ‘object’ and ‘Woman comes to look upon her body as a sexual object for others and for herself’ (Arp 1995: 169). How particular women live this ‘situation of otherness’ (Kruks 1998: 62) differs, but women can never totally escape it. According to Kruks (2001: 47): Unlike a boy, for whom there is no ‘fundamental opposition’ between his concern with how he appears to others and his desire to realize himself in his specific projects, a woman always lives in conflict.

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Towards a richer (feminist) psychology of embodiment Thus far, feminist psychologists have developed the MDI model (see box on page 233) as a tool in trying to think through the body in more useful ways. Might the feminist approaches discussed above prove even more useful in efforts to develop a richer (embodied) psychology of women? The MDI model attempts to go beyond mainstream psychological approaches in which the body only ever appears as the biological body (Stoppard 2000). Three levels are posited (material, discursive, intrapsychic) which in their interaction, produce experiences that come to be labelled PMS or PND (Ussher 2002a). Ussher (2002a: 321) claims that these levels cannot operate separately; ‘each is part of a whole, rather than a ‘causal entity’ in itself’. What is problematic about the model is that no theory is offered explaining how material, discursive and intrapsychic factors are related to one another. For example, how is ‘the intraspychic’ related to the material and discursive ‘levels’? We are told that they ‘interact’ – but how do these ‘levels’ interact and combine in the person? If these ‘levels’ only make sense in their interaction (which remains untheorised), is it helpful to insist on carving up individual experience in this way? Despite the disclaimers, the model is guilty of artificially reducing experience to three ‘levels’. People do not live their lives in three separate realms – material, discursive, intrapsychic. A level-based model cannot adequately theorise how such levels become embodied in individual lives. Theorising the body as a lived body, along with an acknowledgement of the inscriptive powers of regulatory discourses, might potentially offer feminist psychologists a richer basis for thinking through body-subjects. Approaching women’s bodies as ‘lived’ would mean paying attention to how women themselves make meaning from their material bodies. The body itself would become the pivotal site at which gender, race, class struggles could be ‘read’. ‘Reading’ individual women’s lives/situations in this way would also enable insight into ‘the general situation’ of women – in terms of the ways in which social structures and regulatory discourses might work to structure or limit women’s freedom. For example, striking in women’s own descriptions of living with PMS is the sense in which women feel alienated from their (female) bodies. Consider the following descriptions (in Martin 1987: 132): I feel it is not me that is in possession of my body. My whole personality changes, making it very difficult for the people I live and work with (emphasis added). Something seems to snap in my head. I go from a normal state of mind to anger, when I’m really nasty. Usually I’m very even tempered, but in these times it is as if someone else, not me, is doing all this, and it’s very frightening (emphasis added). It is something that is wound up inside, you know, like a great spring. And as soon as anything triggers it off, I’m away. It is very frightening. Like being possessed, I suppose (emphasis added). Using a lived body approach would mean a consideration of each of these three women’s particular situation, asking questions like. What does having a female body mean to them? How do they live their femininity? Are they trying to conform to particular ideals (of femininity/ motherhood)? How is PMS felt and lived through the body? Why is the lived embodiment of anger so frightening to them? Asking these kinds of questions would enable researchers to

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The lived body versus gender How might the concept of the lived body replace the sex/gender distinction? ❍ Like the category ‘sex’, the lived body can refer to the concrete physical facts of bodies, including sexual/reproductive characteristics. However, the lived body concept also allows us to think bodies outside of the rigid binary: male or female only. For example, such a construct can recognise the physical lived realities of intersexed persons, which is simply unthinkable within a binary category of sex. ❍ The very notion of the lived body refuses the distinction between nature and culture (which underpins the sex/gender distinction). ‘The body as lived is always enculturated’ (Young 2002: 416). Our bodies are enculturated by the clothes we wear, the very languages we learn to speak, the sports we learn to play or not to play, how our culture expects us to behave as a man or a women and the habits we acquire from being a part of particular settings (ie. a university, a hospital). ‘Reading’ bodies will allow us to gain insights into how gender, race, class are always deeply embodied and never simply ‘social’ or ‘cultural’. ❍ The idea of the lived body also avoids an additive understanding of identity that is inevitable when we use general categories such as ‘gender’, ‘race’, ‘sexual orientation’ to describe the identities of persons. Our lived experience is not made up of a separate gender segment, a separate class segment and a separate race segment. According to Young (2002: 418) these categories only make sense as group identities: individuals do not constitute their identities ‘from a set of generalised pop-beads strung together’. The lived body does offer ‘more refined tools’ to theorise subjectivity but the concept of gender is still needed to theorise the ways in which social structures position individual persons in relations of inequality (Young 2002: 418).

build a complex picture of the ways in which PMS becomes ‘a thing’ which particular (situated) women use to make sense of their facticity (material female bodies) and which thus becomes a part of their subjectivity. Such an approach would also enable researchers to construct a picture of the general situation of women. De Beauvoir’s argument that women exist in a general relation of alienation to their bodies, seems to be relevant to the experience of PMS. PMS seems to offer a vivid example of how women come to see their body as ‘an alien thing’, something that is ‘not me’ (see above excerpts). The categories of PMS, PMDD and PND offer women explanations of their distress commensurate with women’s general situation of bodily alienation. It is the bad, uncontrollable (female) body with its ‘hormones’ or ‘chemicals’ which makes me a monster (an ‘unfeminine’ woman). Other features of women’s particular situations – unreasonable domestic demands, tensions with children and partners, unhappiness with the impossible requirements of ideal femininity (and motherhood) – become invisible and are absolved of any relationship to women’s distress.

Conclusion In this chapter we have completed a wide-ranging tour of the ways in which the female body has been constructed as pathology by psychology. We have seen that the dominant body appearing within psychology is the biological body: the origin of (female) distress and dysfunction. Individuals are carved up into artificial parts – usually consisting of the

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biological body + individual psychology, with little recognition of the profoundly embodied way in which all human beings live their lives. We have seen the richness of feminist theorising of the body, in particular the concept of the lived body. Hopefully, feminist psychologists will look to the full richness of this theorising in attempts to construct a richer (embodied) psychology of women.

Acknowledgement I would like to thank the AW Mellon Foundation for their generous financial support provided during the writing of this chapter.

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© 2004 Lincoln Theo

Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Western psychiatry and gender identity disorder (GID): A critical perspective Estian Smit Note: At present the writer does not identify as any sex or gender. The following gender-neutral pronouns are used in this chapter in order to avoid gender attributions: ‘e’ instead of she/he, ‘per’ (abbreviation for person) instead of her/him, and ‘pers’ instead of her/his. However, the use of gendered pronouns in quotations from other authors has not been altered. Gender-neutral pronouns are increasingly being used although there is no standardised set as yet. Other examples that are often used include ‘sie’ (instead of she/he) and ‘hir’ (instead of her/him). See Williams, J. (2004) (Version 0.9.13) ‘Gender-neutral FAQ: a general and specific discussion of genderneutral alternatives to gendered pronouns, including answers to frequently asked questions’. www. aetherlumina.com/gnp/ [13 December 2005]. Wikipedia. (2005) ‘Gender-neutral pronoun’. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronouns [13 December 2005].

Introduction ‘How do you know you want rhinoplasty, a nose job?’ he inquires, fixing me with a penetrating stare. ‘Because,’ I reply, suddenly unable to raise my eyes above his brown wingtips, ‘I’ve always felt like a small-nosed woman trapped in a large-nosed body.’ ‘And how long have you felt this way?’ He leans forward, sounding as if he knows the answer and needs only to hear the words. ‘Oh, since I was five or six, doctor, practically all my life.’ ‘Then you have a rhino-identity disorder,’ the shoetops state flatly. My body sags in relief. ‘But first,’ he goes on, ‘we want you to get letters from two psychiatrists and live as a small-nosed woman for three years ... just to be sure’ (Wilchins 1997: 63).

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Psychology and psychiatry worldwide currently rely on two main sources for the diagnostic classification of so-called sexual and gender identity disorders. They are the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). Both these nomenclatures are informed by the methodologies and traditions of Western science and biomedicine, and by the values and assumptions of the cultures within which they developed. Among the latter is a rigid adherence to the notion of two biological sexes (female and male) with two corresponding gender roles. All bodies that do not clearly fall within very narrow, physically defined categories of femaleness or maleness are characterised as ill and abnormal by the conventional biomedical approach. The ICD,1 for example, contains long lists of conditions for every conceivable ‘physical deviation’ from what it considers a ‘normal’ female or male body. This partly accounts for the imposition of socalled ‘corrective’ genital surgery on many infants in hospitals across the world.2 The prevalence of these practices in South Africa and the pain and suffering caused by them were highlighted in 2003 with the production of the first local television documentary about intersexed issues.3 It exposed the way in which medical discourses enforce ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ dichotomies, and how medical specialists in South Africa help promote particular ideas about what constitutes ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ bodies. Western psychiatry and psychology assumes the validity of the biomedical approach. In fact, its conceptualisation of gender identity disorders only makes sense against the background of such a binary model of biological sex. That is why, as we shall see later, an ‘intersex condition is an explicitly stated contraindication for diagnosis of gender identity disorder’ in the DSM (Witten et al 2003: 218). To diagnose someone with gender identity disorder (GID), the person must be born clearly ‘female’ or ‘male’, but lacking the feelings, wishes or self-expression stereotypically associated with their birth sex. Whereas a medical diagnosis of intersexuality is often used as a license to impose unnecessary medical treatment without informed consent, the psychiatric diagnosis of GID, on the other hand, is used as a gatekeeping device for people (e.g. transsexual persons) who do wish to change their biological sex. In other words, one must first obtain a GID diagnosis – that is, let yourself be diagnosed as mentally ill – before being allowed to change from ‘female’ to ‘male’ or vice versa. Furthermore, unless you can convince psychiatrists that you conform to stereotypical expectations for the ‘opposite sex’, you are denied access to

“Is it a boy or a girl?” © 2005 Nina Gelderblom

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hormones, surgeries and other procedures associated with changing sex. Wishes for alternative, non-binary forms of gender identity, body modification and body diversity are not encouraged, nor considered healthy. In order to fully understand why the concept of GID is problematic, it must not be seen in isolation. Ultimately we need to reflect on the suitability of the whole psychiatric paradigm and broader worldview of which GID and the other ‘mental disorders’ form part. We need to ask to what extent they represent a humane and kind way of going about ourselves and other human beings. In an attempt to facilitate such a reflection, this chapter starts with a brief history of the DSM and ICD publications, as well as indicating their philosophical approach and scientific beliefs. To develop a more specific understanding of the historical origins of GID, we then take a look at how European culture approached gender and body diversity within its own and other societies, and discuss the views held by nineteenth- and twentieth-century sexologists and physicians. This is followed by an analysis of the current DSM-IV-TR and ICD-10 diagnostic categories for GIDs. We also look at models of service delivery to transsexual and transgender people, comparing a prescriptive medical model with a client-centred harm-reduction model. The chapter concludes with the challenges emanating from transgender, transsexual and intersexed movements to GID and a binary model of sex/gender. An appeal is made for an end to the pathologisation, marginalisation and suppression of gender and body diversity within psychiatry and beyond.

The DSM and ICD The first diagnostic classification system that is commonly used in the diagnosis of gender identity disorders is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) – a publication of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). The APA was originally established in 1844 by the heads of US mental hospitals under the name of the ‘Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane’. But it currently describes itself as ‘a medical specialty society representing nearly 36 000 psychiatrists from around the globe’ (APA 2005) and calls itself the ‘voice and conscience of modern psychiatry’ (APA 2004). The APA also claims that the DSM – first published in 1952 with its most recent edition being the DSM-IV-TR4 (Fourth edition, text revision) of 2000 – ‘remains the world’s gold standard for the diagnosis of psychiatric illnesses’ (APA 2005). At the same time, however, the APA acknowledges that its own history ‘reflects the history of psychiatry in the United States’ (Ozarin & McMillan 2003). The second diagnostic classification system is the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), which is a publication of the World Health Organisation (WHO). The ICD is the latest in a series of classifications that has its origins in the 1850s. It developed through the early work of British, French, German and Swiss medical statisticians and government officials.5 The ICD became the responsibility of WHO at the time of the latter’s establishment in 1948. WHO states that the ‘ICD has become the international standard diagnostic classification for all general epidemiological and many health management purposes’ (WHO 2005a). The current version is the ICD-106 (Tenth Revision), which was adopted by the World Health Assembly in 1990 and came into use in 1994.

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Although the DSM and ICD are two distinct classification systems, each with its own origins and histories, there are continuing efforts to synchronise them, partly because of the desire to eliminate ‘problems in … the identification of diagnostic criteria that can be applied cross-culturally’ (Ivanovs & Marshall 2001b: 7).7 The twofold assumption behind these synchronisation efforts is, first, that it is possible to develop a set of diagnostic criteria that are applicable to all people in all contexts, and second, that the further development and integration of the DSM and ICD holds the key to this. However, the notions of normality and pathology at work in psychiatry – and by implication in publications such as the DSM and ICD – are not neutral, but reflect specific philosophical approaches, cultural beliefs and social values to the exclusion of others. First of all, like Western science generally, psychiatry is in part a product of the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. As such it shares the latter’s preoccupation with rational explanation of the human self. In addition, it aspires to Western science’s notions of neutrality, objectivity and empirical verification. This leads to highly reductionistic models of disease and disorder and a refusal to recognise levels of understanding that go beyond scientific categories based on a materialist philosophy.

The universalist aspirations of the DSM and ICD © 2005 Nina Gelderblom

But notwithstanding the desire for scientific respectability, recent versions of the DSM steered clear of causal explanation. In other words, it does not present the causes of different mental disorders, although that is the way in which Western medicine generally strives to isolate disease entities. Recognising the absence of a consensus about the aetiology of mental disorders, the APA deliberately opted for a merely descriptive approach that identifies the categories of mental disorders in terms of clusters of symptoms or sets of criteria (cf. Charney et al 2002: 31–32; Kupfer et al 2002: xviii). According to the DSM and ICD, if you meet the criteria for a specific mental disorder, you are diagnosed as suffering from that particular disorder. In other words, it is assumed that a disorder expresses itself in more or less the same way in all persons suffering from it.

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The irreducible uniqueness of a person’s experience and context is not central to diagnosis. Indeed, given that the aim of psychiatric diagnosis is to find categories into which it can fit a person, the diagnostic process cannot avoid stripping away experiences, perspectives, complexities and details that might be of vital importance to the person in question.8 As the APA says itself, the whole purpose of the diagnostic terms in the DSM is to ‘provide a convenient shorthand when communicating about patients’ (APA not dated). In other words, the kind of approach promoted by classification systems like the DSM and ICD is not an intuitive understanding of the rich tapestry of human experience, but rather one of decontextualised, impersonal and abstract generalisations. The ways in which the DSM and ICD identify mental disorders have been repeatedly challenged as arbitrary, biased and culturally relative.9 And although there is some degree of dissatisfaction within the APA about the proliferation of categories in the DSM and concerns about their scientific validity, this seems to be leading to a renewed commitment to recast psychiatry along the lines of biomedicine.10 In other words, a strong conviction persists within psychiatry that neurobiological or genetic causes will be found for many – if not all – mental disorders.11 Western perspectives critical of a medical model of psychiatry have gone under the names of anti-psychiatry, critical psychiatry and post-psychiatry.12 But challenging the assumption that a biological basis exists for so-called mental disorders is not enough. In fact, whether or not psychiatry finds biological bases for the mental disorders it constructs is not of particular importance. It is much more important to recognise that any approach aspiring chiefly to satisfy the criteria of a Western scientific empiricism is unlikely to be of great help in solving the world’s problems. If it is the alleviation of human suffering that is our foremost concern, then we need an altogether different approach. According to Mutwa (1996: 202): [I]t’s high time that science [including the human sciences] was brought back into the realm of the spiritual so that it would wear the blanket and feel the caress of spirituality and have a reverence for the world and all that dwell in it. But in assuming the universal and cross-cultural applicability of the DSM and ICD, and setting them up as international standards, the APA and WHO do not recognise that more holistic African, Eastern and alternative Western knowledge systems constitute fundamental challenges to their approach. It is also ironic that the roles of Western medicine13 and psychiatry14 in the history of colonialism have not served as sufficient warning to the oppressive and dehumanising nature of attempts to apply one particular ‘healing’ tradition across all contexts and to all people. In fact, as Keller (2001 not numbered) observes, ‘attitudes encouraged by colonial psychiatric discourse have persisted in the post-colonial era’. In an attempt to acknowledge the importance of cultural issues in psychiatric diagnosis, the APA added an ‘Outline for Cultural Formulation and Glossary of Culture-Bound Syndromes’ as appendix to the DSM-IV and DSM-IV-TR. However, the fact that this was added as an afterthought, and that it significantly diluted the proposals put forward by the group who dealt with the issue of culture and diagnosis,15 indicates the marginal importance the APA attached to the issue. The effect of the cultural addition was to give further support to the universalist aspirations of the DSM and to exoticise as ‘cultural’ anything that challenges its simplistic categories and criteria. This is likely to be the case in the DSM-V as well.

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Despite a number of insights into how methodology and the diagnostic process itself is culturally determined, the DSM-V research agenda on culture and psychiatric diagnosis continues to enumerate the following:16 ❍ cultural variables – ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘language’, ‘education’, ‘religion’, ‘gender and sexual orientation’, ‘cultural values’; ❍ special populations – ‘children’, ‘adolescents’, ‘the elderly’, ‘women’, ‘gays and lesbians’, ‘homeless persons’, ‘ethnic and other minorities’; and ❍ special topics – ‘stigmatization and racism’,17 ‘gender issues’, ‘violence and trauma’, ‘acculturation and acculturative processes’, ‘religion and spirituality issues’. In order to frame certain groups and issues as ‘special’ or ‘variables’, you need to assume the existence of a universal standard18 against which all can be measured and some be shown to be special cases or variants of the norm. The problem is that this ‘universal’ standard is not really universal at all, but represents a particular kind of Euro-American perspective on the world. Conspicuously absent under the variables, special populations and special topics are categories like ‘adults, ‘men’, ‘heterosexuals’, ‘property owners’, ‘ethnic majorities’, ‘globalisation and market economy processes’, ‘secular issues’ and so on. This reveals a lot about who is seen to constitute the researched and who the research gaze, who the exceptions and who the universal rule, who the problem and who the solution. One could question the usefulness of any efforts – however well intentioned – to make the DSM and ICD more culturally sensitive. The very assumption that all communities, groups and persons can be objectively studied, compared and subsumed under one classification system is a form of cultural imperialism. It refuses to admit that the knowledge systems, perspectives and experiences of the people it researches represent a contestation of the nature of the DSM and ICD classifications and the Western scientific tradition.

European history and gender/body diversity In order to facilitate a critical reflection of the DSM and ICD diagnostic categories for gender identity disorders, it is important to examine their historical development. Much of modern psychiatry, including the current conceptualisation of sexual and gender identity disorders, had its origins in the work of European doctors and sexologists of the nineteenth century. Their theories, in turn, cannot be isolated from their socio-historical milieus. We must keep in mind that, throughout European history and culture from the time of ancient Greece and Rome, through the Middle Ages, Renaissance and into the nineteenth century, there were accounts of humans or gods who in some way or another transcended or transgressed the gender conventions of their particular milieus – whether through dress and behaviour, partial or complete bodily transformations from one sex to another, or through being a ‘hermaphrodite’.19 In more recent centuries these included figures such as Joan of Arc, the Abbé de Choissy, Herculine Barbine, the Chevalier d’Eon de Beaumont and James Barry, many of whom nineteenth-century sexologists would have been familiar with. Additionally, ‘[k]nowledge of cross-cultural gender diversity has been an important point of reference for Western discussions of sexuality and gender since the sixteenth century’ (Roscoe 2000: 183). Through the accounts of its travellers, explorers and conquerors,

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European culture knew about gender diversity in other parts of the world, including the fact that some societies, such as those in North America, revered gender diverse people as sacred.20 ‘Hermaphrodite’, ‘berdache’ and ‘sodomite’ were among the terms Europeans used from the sixteenth century onwards to describe gender diversity in non-European societies. At best, European culture viewed these gender and body diverse people as fabulous prodigies, at worst as sinful or diseased, but definitely not as worthy of worship. The view that became established in the nineteenth century was that such sexual and gender variation belonged to ‘primitive’ societies and that when it occurred in an ‘advanced civilisation’ it was the result of degeneration. The kind of Christian morality preached by Europe was one that equated difference with defect (cf. Roscoe 2000: 178–183). In The History of Sexuality, Foucault argued that from the seventeenth century onward a shift occurred in how European culture talked about and dealt with matters of ‘sex’. ‘Sex’ increasingly became something that had to be handled with greater moral circumspection, and at the same time had to be brought within the purview of rationality and administered in the public interest.21 By the late nineteenth century, medical science had constructed a whole field of phenomena as perverted or sexually peculiar. The aim was to manage, treat, cure, eliminate or at the very least explain them. The use of case studies played an important role in this process of medical classification and analysis, and European doctors and sexologists now had a collection of case histories dealing with sexual and gender digressions close to home. The main focus had shifted away from examples in distant history or remote parts of the world: The most significant break between Victorian medical discourse and earlier texts was in their rules of evidence – in particular, the use of the case study. Now the ‘other,’ that instance of difference that must be explained, is found at home, among the mentally ill, the poor, the female, the criminal, and so forth. By the end of the nineteenth century, detailed case histories of Europeans had become the primary source of data, displacing Scythian enarees [ancient cross-dressing priests] and North American berdaches to footnotes or separate chapters (Roscoe 2000: 182–183).

Sexual inversion in the nineteenth century In their interpretations of the case histories of people who seemed to defy the gender binaries of European culture, early sexologists worked with a notion of ‘contrary sexual feeling’ or ‘sexual inversion’. This notion was the main precursor of what is now known as gender identity disorder. It was in 1869 that the German psychiatrist Westphal published an article introducing the category of ‘contrary sexual feeling’, which according to per did not necessarily always involve the inversion of the sexual instinct (i.e. the presence of same-sex desire), but rather the feeling that one’s whole inner being is alienated from one’s own sex (Westphal 1869: 107). Among others, the article deals at length with a case Westphal encountered in 186422 where someone who had a ‘female’ body expressed the desire to be a man (80). The article argued that ‘contrary sexual feeling’ was (at least in the cases encountered) likely to be the symptom of a pathological condition – either neuropathic or psychopathic. But Westphal and pers peers were well aware that not all societies viewed such

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phenomena as pathological and perverse. In 1868 Westphal told the Berlin MedicalPsychological Society of several European cases of people who were ‘perversely’ inclined to persons of the same sex or who behaved in ways not corresponding to their own sex. Bastian (the founder of German ethnography) then stated that such ‘perverse sexual inclinations are often found in uncivilised tribes, that in some the individuals afflicted with it are even treated as a special caste, as more highly placed personalities, as sacred and the like’ (quoted in Roscoe 2000: 182). Westphal (1869: 108) subsequently observed that: Among the Indians there is accordingly a class of men who, driven by an irresistible urge to wear feminine clothing, act entirely as women. These women-men or menwomen mostly constitute the priestly class .... On the island of Ramrih, in contrast, women acted as men in order to preside over the cult and had other women entrusted to themselves with whom they lived together as husband and wife.23 But such knowledge of cross-cultural gender diversity clearly did little to make European sexologists such as Westphal appreciate such phenomena either abroad or at home. Following Westphal’s introduction of the category ‘contrary sexual feeling’ – or ‘sexual inversion’, as it later came to be known in the English language24 – this notion dominated the thinking of early sexologists where issues of gender and body diversity were concerned. Among these was Von Krafft-Ebing, a German professor of psychiatry in Austria-Hungary who can be considered the founder of modern sexual psychopathology, and whose Psychopathia Sexualis (first published in 1886 and repeatedly revised) contained 238 case histories, constituting an attempt to define every kind of sexual deviance. The work played a major part in psychiatry’s effort to establish its authority over matters of sexuality. It popularised categories such as fetishism, sadism and masochism, and devoted much attention to ‘contrary sexual feeling’. Krafft-Ebing distinguished between congenital and acquired contrary sexual feeling. These two main categories were further divided into subcategories,25 indicating both the degree of same-sex desire in a person and the degree to which the person’s character and appearance approximated those of the opposite sex. Krafft-Ebing regarded congenital contrary sexual feeling as the result of hereditary degeneracy. Acquired contrary sexual feeling was also seen as the result of a morbid predisposition, but one that would normally remain latent, requiring ‘the influence of accidental exciting causes to rouse it from its slumber’ (Krafft-Ebing quoted in Knauer 2000: 415). Krafft-Ebing thought that acquired contrary sexual feeling could be treated, but that interventions were unlikely to be successful in congenital cases. For early sexologists such as Westphal and Krafft-Ebing, ‘contrary sexual feeling’ or ‘sexual inversion’ encompassed a number of phenomena which would later come to be divided into ‘homosexuality’, ‘transvestism’, ‘transsexuality’ and ‘intersexuality’ respectively. A term such as ‘homosexual’, for example, was actually in use since the late nineteenth century, but it had a broader range of meaning than is the case today. Early writings on sexual psychopathology did not make a clear-cut distinction between issues of sex (the physical anatomy of a person), sexual orientation (the sex towards which a person is attracted) and gender identity (the gender with which a person identifies). Such conceptual separation only really solidified in twentieth-century medical, academic and activist discourses. Prosser (1998: 138, 143) has noted in this regard that the early sexologists primarily

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measured the degree of ‘transgender’ in a person rather than the degree of ‘same-sex desire’. In other words, they were concerned with the extent to which a person transgressed gender norms in general, of which sexual orientation was but one aspect. This differs from the later Kinsey scale which is preoccupied with sexual object choice alone (cf. Knauer 2000: 416). It is clear that terms such as ‘sexual inversion’ and ‘contrary sexual feeling’ imply some form of reversal or deviation from what is considered ‘normal’. For some, like Westphal and Krafft-Ebing, such abnormality was a sign of degeneracy and disease, although not necessarily deserving of criminalisation and punishment by law. But even someone like Ellis, who tried to argue against a disease model in Sexual Inversion (first published in 1897), still used expressions like ‘congenital anomaly’, ‘congenital abnormality’ and ‘an aberration from the usual course of nature’ (Ellis 1915: 322, 325). Another author, Ulrichs – a civil servant and journalist, not a medical doctor – produced 12 writings between 1864 and 1879. In them e provided an intricate classification system and scientific explanation for gender and sexual diversity (probably the first of its kind), as well as advocated for the rights of people whose gender and sexual expression differed from imposed norms. But much like pers peers, Ulrichs remained caught up in a paradigm that interpreted any diversity in terms of various combinations and degrees of femaleness/ maleness and femininity/masculinity. For example, e thought that men who had an erotic attraction to other men and/or engaged during childhood in activities such as playing with dolls, possessed a ‘female’ soul/psyche/essence which was confined in a ‘male’ body.26 Whether or not their agenda was one of pathologisation or emancipation of diversity, all the nineteenth-century writers mentioned reinforced ‘female’/‘male’ or ‘feminine’/’masculine’ as binary categories and normative poles against which everyone was to be measured. Subsequent mainstream discourses on gender identity in psychology and psychiatry would not deviate from this path.

The emergence of the transsexual model in the twentieth century During the 1900s the category ‘invert’ as a term for someone who transcended or transgressed gender norms was gradually displaced by the category ‘homosexual’. ‘Homosexual’, in turn, became more narrowly associated with same-sex desire. In other words, the replacement of ‘invert’ with ‘homosexual’ brought about a shift of emphasis from a broader perspective on gender to a more narrow focus on sexual-object choice. This conceptual move was later celebrated by lesbian and gay studies because it eventually enabled the separation of same-sex desire from cross-gender identification (cf. Prosser 1998: 150–151). In fact, this move created the perception that issues of sexual orientation could be separated altogether from issues of gender expectations.27 Prosser (1998: 152) argues that the displacement of the discourse on ‘sexual inversion’ meant that – for the most part – forms of gender inversion or cross-gender identification ceased to be prominent as a diagnosable medical condition until the middle of the twentieth century when the term ‘transsexual’ became popular. However, even before the advent of the diagnostic category of ‘transsexual’, there were attempts within Western medicine to provide people with sex changes. Although castration and penectomy were practised since ancient times in many parts of the world (including Europe), modern Western medicine’s first known attempt to assist

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someone in changing sex (or at least to masculinise female genitals) by means of surgery, took place in Germany in 1882. The next known cases only feature from 1912 onwards, with the first complete surgical transition from male to female reported in 1931. During the early 1900s both plastic surgery and endocrinology were still in their beginning stages, with surgical procedures being the only option open to people who wished to change sex. The first full transition from female to male that included the use of surgery and hormones was undertaken by Dillon in 1939 and completed in the late 1940s.28 A number of the earliest seekers of medical treatment obtained access to surgery through the recommendation of the German doctor and medico-legal expert, Hirschfeld, who coined the term ‘transvestite’ in Transvestites: The Erotic Drive to Cross-Dress, published in 1910. The book included biographies of people who would now be classified as ‘transsexual’ or ‘transgender’ (Pfäfflin 1997). As a result, people who wanted to change sex came to be diagnosed as ‘transvestites’, and no longer as ‘inverts’ (Prosser 1998: 152). Hirschfeld was probably also the first person to use the term ‘transsexual’. In a 1923 article e talks of ‘psychic transsexualism’, but it was still some decades before the term would be developed and widely used as a clinical category (Ekins & King 2001). Cauldwell was the first writer to systematically separate transsexuality from transvestism and hermaphroditism; however, pers writings were geared to the general public and did not make much of an impact in the scientific community (Ekins & King 2001). In 1949 Cauldwell used the expression ‘psychopathic transexual’ (with one ‘s’) to diagnose a person with a female body who identified as a man and who requested surgery and hormones to attain a male body. Cauldwell was unsympathetic to the person’s wishes and e clearly thought it criminal to change a healthy body from one sex to the other. Although Cauldwell had a fairly liberal attitude towards homosexuality and transvestism, this did not extend to transsexuality, which e deemed a mental illness: Among both sexes are individuals who wish to be members of the sex to which they do not properly belong. Their condition usually arises from a poor hereditary background and a highly unfavourable childhood environment … When an individual who is unfavorably affected psychologically determines to live and appear as a member of the sex to which he or she does not belong, such an individual is what may be called a psychopathic transexual. This means, simply, that one is mentally unhealthy and because of this the person desires to live as a member of the opposite sex (Cauldwell 2001 not numbered). But it was the physician Benjamin who did most to popularise the term ‘transsexual’ within medical literature and beyond. Benjamin completed a medical degree in Germany in 1912 and soon afterwards started a private medical practice in the United States (Ihlenfeld 2004: 148–149). Benjamin had been familiar with Hirschfeld’s work since at least the 1920s and started elaborating a personal theory of ‘transsexualism’ from 1953 onwards. This culminated in Benjamin’s classic work The Transsexual Phenomenon, which appeared in 1966. The work distinguishes transsexuality from hermaphroditism, transvestism and homosexuality. Yet Benjamin also stressed that in pers view ‘nature does not abide by rigid systems’ and ‘overlapping and blurring of types or groups is certainly frequent’ (Benjamin, 1999, chapter 2, not numbered). Benjamin said that ‘transsexuality’ was not to be confused with ‘hermaphroditism’ –

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nowadays called ‘intersexuality’. The transsexual is usually born with a body that clearly belongs to one sex – what Benjamin called ‘physically normal’ – but identifies with the opposite sex. Hermaphrodites and pseudohermaphrodites, on the other hand, are born with what Benjamin termed physical ‘deformities’ or ‘abnormalities’. In other words, their ‘physical sex is in doubt’ (Benjamin 1999, chapters 1 & 2, not numbered). To differentiate transsexuality from ‘transvestism’, Benjamin stated that, whereas ‘true transvestites’ are usually content with their morphological sex and only wish to cross-dress, ‘[t]rue transsexuals feel that they belong to the other sex, they want to be and function as members of the opposite sex, not only to appear as such’. According to Benjamin, true transsexuals tend to view their sex organs as ‘disgusting deformities’ and want them changed through surgery (Benjamin 1999, chapter 2, not numbered). In other words, the emphasis for transvestites is more on dressing like the opposite sex and for transsexuals more on changing their body to the opposite sex. Finally, Benjamin distinguished transsexuality from ‘homosexuality’ by saying that homosexuality concerned sex relations between people of the same sex. Unlike transsexuals, homosexuals are happy with their own sex and merely wish to have partners of the same sex. And although some homosexuals may want to cross-dress, this was not essential to homosexuality. Benjamin thought that, unlike homosexuals, all transsexuals felt heterosexual with respect to their own birth sex. In other words, e believed that all transsexuals were attracted to members of their own birth sex, but that once sex reassignment took place they would function as heterosexual members of society (cf. Benjamin 1999, chapter 2, not numbered). Benjamin’s work played a major role in making sex reassignment treatment accessible and acceptable within medical circles. Although working within a medical paradigm and with a notion of transsexuality that many would now consider conservative, pers commonsense approach towards the provision of treatment in several ways defied the medical and psychiatric establishment of the time, which tended to diagnose transsexual people as delusional. Benjamin also repeatedly stated that ‘clinical pictures are approximations, schematized and idealized’ and that different types of ‘transvestites’ and ‘transsexuals’ can never be sharply separated29 (Benjamin 1999, chapter 2, not numbered). But notwithstanding these assertions and the fact that some of pers case histories amply illustrated the fact, Benjamin simultaneously helped to enforce a fairly stereotypical picture of people who wished to access hormones and surgical procedures. Much of what e had to say about pers patients (152 male-to-female transsexuals and 20 female-to-male transsexuals) informed what was to become the dominant paradigm of transsexuality in the medical and psychiatric fields. For example, e stated that in female-to-male transsexuals ‘[i]nterests, attitudes, and fantasies take a masculine direction’, that ‘[t]ypically masculine occupations such as those of soldier, policeman, truck driver, would be their ideal’ and that they ‘[woo] their women as men do’ (Benjamin 1999, chapter 10, not numbered). And the kind of picture Benjamin sketched of male-to-female transsexuals was either of someone for whom (aside from gaining the appearance of female genitals) ‘the attainment of a sex life as a woman is the most essential part of the future life, with marriage and the possible adoption of children as the dearest wish’. Or alternatively, it was of someone for whom ‘[t]he sex life is less essential or altogether immaterial’ as long as they can live as a woman (Benjamin 1999, chapter 8, not

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numbered). In addition, homosexuality or bisexuality disqualified one from being a ‘true transsexual’ (cf. Benjamin 1999, chapters 2 & 6, not numbered). As Stone (1993, section 3, not numbered) points out: When the first clinics were constituted, Benjamin’s book was the researchers’ standard reference. And when the first transsexuals were evaluated for their suitability for surgery, their behavior matched up gratifyingly with Benjamin’s criteria. The researchers produced papers which reported on this, and which were used as bases for funding. It took a surprisingly long time – several years – for the researchers to realize that the reason the candidates’ behavioral profiles matched Benjamin’s so well was that the candidates, too, had read Benjamin’s book, which was passed from hand to hand within the transsexual community, and they were only too happy to provide the behaviour that led to acceptance for surgery. According to Denny (2004: 26–27) the transsexual model that emerged was one that defined transsexuals as people who were desperately unhappy because they did not fit their birth-assigned sex socially or psychologically, and who felt that they belonged to the other sex. The dominant discourse was one of being ‘trapped in the wrong body’ – either as a ‘man trapped in a woman’s body’ or a ‘woman trapped in a man’s body’. Various theories of causation were offered, but as psychotherapy and other treatments proved ineffective, doctors (like Benjamin) who were sympathetic to the transsexual’s plight were prepared to grant gender reassignment in the most extreme cases. Gender reassignment was not seen as a cure, but rather as an attempt to relieve distress. Moreover, the transsexual model was fairly rigid, reflecting as it did specific norms of femaleness/maleness and femininity/ masculinity dominant in North America and Europe at the time: [T]he treatment … was predicated on the notion that there were but two genders …. Sex reassignment converted males into females and females into males; applicants were either accepted for sex reassignment or turned away; there was no middle ground (Denny 2004: 28). In other words, if you did not completely identify with the ‘opposite sex’, or if you had a wish for forms of body modification that did not constitute a complete gender reassignment, it disqualified you from access to hormones and surgery. And even if you did demand a complete gender reassignment, you were only deemed a suitable candidate if you were able to show that you complied with the heteronormative stereotypes of the sex towards which you wanted to be reassigned. State hospitals in South Africa, for example, have in the past refused hormones and/or surgery to people who had been married or had children. The argument, clearly, was that if you had been in some kind of heterosexual relationship before, you could not be a ‘true transsexual’, and that granting gender reassignment in such a case might produce a homosexual, something completely anathema to a paradigm that was staunchly heteronormative. It is significant that psychiatric wards of military hospitals in South Africa in the apartheid era (1967–1991) used counselling, aversion treatment and hormonal treatment in an attempt to convert conscripts suspected of homosexuality into heterosexuals (cf. Van Zyl et al 1999). In The Aversion Project: Human Rights Abuses of Gays and Lesbians in the South

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African Defence Force by Health Workers During the Apartheid Era, Van Zyl et al (1999: 89) mention at least one case where a homosexual conscript subjected to hormonal treatment was confronted with the possibility of being transsexual. Around the time of the release of the former study, several reports (e.g. Kirk 2000), also appeared in the media claiming that between 1971 and 1989 the military had performed sex changes (some of them incomplete) on a number of gay conscripts when all else failed to ‘cure’ them of homosexuality. However, among the people who obtained gender reassignment through the South African military, not all were unwilling or ill-informed victims. There were also people for whom the military offered the opportunity to make their life’s dream come true. But harsh conditions were imposed, such as having to sever all links with former friends and associates. This was typical of early gender programmes around the world which often required: … transsexual clients to divorce, change their names, quit their jobs, dress and behave in stereotypically masculine or feminine ways, and agree to participate in follow-up studies by offering the promise of hormonal therapy and SRS (Denny 2004: 30). The classical transsexual model assumed that a true transsexual was someone whose greatest desire was to blend in completely after undergoing sex reassignment and obliterate all traces of one’s transitional history.30 It has also been pointed out that transsexuality is probably the only case in which telling lies about one’s past was routinely recommended as part of therapy.31

The Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA) Benjamin’s legacy was recognised through the naming of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA), which was established in 1979. The HBIGDA defines itself as ‘a professional organization devoted to the understanding and treatment of gender identity disorders’ and currently consists of around 350 professionals (including surgeons, endocrinologists, psychiatrists and psychologists) working in the field. During its early years the HBIGDA had to contend with an increasingly conservative climate (including the appearance of a biased study32 that claimed that ‘no objective advantage’ resulted from sex reassignment), which lead to the closure of many universityaffiliated gender clinics in the United States. It is therefore not surprising that from the beginning (and partly in an effort to protect itself against criticism) the HBIGDA put a lot of energy into developing criteria – the so-called ‘Standards of Care (SOC)’ – for screening out those it considered unsuitable candidates for sex reassignment treatment. The HBIGDA claims that its SOC are ‘internationally accepted guidelines … designed to promote the health and welfare of persons with gender identity disorders’. We shall have a closer look at these guidelines when we discuss models of service delivery below. For now it is sufficient to note that the SOC base its understanding of gender identity disorders on the diagnostic categories of the DSM and ICD, which are where we turn to next.

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Diagnostic criteria for gender identity disorders (GIDs) The DSM-IV-TR and the ICD-10 employ slightly different diagnostic categories for various so-called gender identity disorders, but their intentions, terminology and criteria are largely the same. See the accompanying table for a comparative summary. Both classification systems provide separate diagnostic categories for children and adolescents/adults, as well as one or more catch-all categories to cover miscellaneous conditions. General criteria In order to make a GID diagnosis, the DSM-IV-TR stipulates four main criteria that are applicable to all age groups. Cross-gender identification The first criterion is a ‘strong and persistent cross-gender identification (not merely a desire for any perceived cultural advantages of being the other sex)’ (APA 2000: 581). The DSM hereby implies that any cross-gender identification that is exclusively based on a desire for cultural advantages of being the other sex cannot qualify as ‘strong and persistent’. It provides no further explanation or motivation for qualifying the criterion in this way. But how can cross-gender identification or ‘a desire to transgress an assigned gender33 category be read outside of cultural meaning?’ (Spade 2003: 25). After all, all our identities are formed in relation to others and are inseparable from cultural expectations of how we want others to behave towards us. The DSM criterion essentialises and depoliticises gender by suggesting the possibility of a gender categorisation not read through the lens of the current cultural gender hierarchy (Spade 2003: 25). Discomfort with sex or gender role The second criterion is the presence of ‘persistent discomfort with his or her sex or sense of inappropriateness in the gender role of that sex’ (APA 2000: 581). The assumption here – as in the first criterion – is that there are two sexes, each with its corresponding gender role. The normal and desired state of affairs is to be born and remain one sex and to assume its associated gender role throughout one’s life. For the DSM, agreement and satisfaction with such a state of affairs signifies mental health, whereas dissatisfaction with it is regarded as a ‘disturbance’ that exposes one to psychiatric diagnosis. Absence of intersexuality The third criterion stipulates that the ‘disturbance is not concurrent with a physical intersex34 condition’ (APA 2000: 581). Because a GID diagnosis relies on and upholds a binary model of sex/gender, it requires a person to be unmistakeably classifiable as one sex (i.e. biologically female or male), but wanting to be, or identifying with, ‘the other sex’. If one’s body does not conform to conventional notions of maleness or femaleness to start with, then references to appropriate ‘gender role’, ‘the other sex’, ‘cross-gender identification’ and so on cease to make much sense. Non-conforming bodies in effect undermine the very foundation of the diagnosis. It is therefore not surprising that what the DSM-IV-TR calls ‘intersex conditions’ are lumped together under a miscellaneous category (GIDNOS) – see below – with other cases that significantly blur binary sex/gender boundaries.

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All ages:

Children:

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DSM-IV-TR

ICD-10

Gender Identity Disorders

Gender Identity Disorders

A. Strong, persistent cross-gender identification (not merely desire for cultural advantages of other sex) B. Persistent discomfort with one’s sex or sense of inappropriateness in gender role of that sex C. Not simultaneous with physical intersex condition D. Causing clinically significant distress/ impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of functioning

ICD does not specify general criteria applicable across age groups.

302.6 Gender Identity Disorder in Children

F64.2 Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood

Regarding criterion A, at least four of the following: ❍ repeatedly stated desire to be, or insistence that one is, the other sex ❍ in boys, preference for crossdressing or simulating female attire; in girls, insistence on wearing only stereotypical masculine clothes ❍ strong, persistent preferences for cross-sex roles in make-believe play or persistent fantasies of being the other sex ❍ intense desire to participate in stereotypical games and pastimes of the other sex ❍ strong preference for playmates of the other sex Regarding criterion B: ❍ in boys, asserting his penis/testes are disgusting or will disappear or that it would be better not to have a penis, or aversion to rough-and-tumble play and rejecting male stereotypical toys, games, activities ❍ in girls, rejecting urination in a sitting position, asserting she has/will grow a penis, or asserting she does not want to grow breasts or menstruate, or marked aversion to normative feminine clothes

❍ Usually first manifest during early

childhood (always well before puberty) ❍ Persistent, intense distress about

assigned sex, together with desire to be (or insistence that one is) of the other sex ❍ Persistent preoccupation with the dress and activities of the opposite sex and repudiation of one’s own sex ❍ Profound disturbance of the normal gender identity (not mere tomboyishness in girls or girlish behaviour in boys) ❍ Adolescents not to be classified here, but under F66 Psychological and behavioural disorders associated with sexual development and orientation

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DSM-IV-TR and ICD diagnostic criteria for gender identity disorders DSM-IV-TR

ICD-10

302.85 Gender Identity Disorder in Adolescents and Adults

F64.0 Transsexualism

Regarding criterion A, symptoms like: ❍ stated desire to be the other sex, frequent passing as the other sex, desire to live or be treated as the other sex, or conviction that one has the typical feelings and reactions of the other sex Regarding criterion B, symptoms like: ❍ preoccupation with getting rid of primary and secondary sex characteristics (e.g. request for hormones, surgery or other procedures to physically alter sexual characteristics to simulate the other sex) or belief that one was born the wrong sex

❍ Desire to live and be accepted as

member of opposite sex ❍ Usually accompanied by a:

– sense of discomfort with, or inappropriateness of, one’s anatomic sex – wish to have surgery and hormonal treatment to make one’s body as congruent as possible with one’s preferred sex

F64.1 Dual-role Transvestism ❍ Wearing clothes of the opposite sex

part-time in order to enjoy temporary experience of membership of the opposite sex ❍ No desire for more permanent sex change or associated surgical reassignment ❍ No sexual excitement accompanying the cross-dressing ❍ GID of adolescence or adulthood, nontranssexual type

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302.6 Gender Identity Disorder Not Otherwise Specified

F64.8 Other Gender Identity Disorders F64.9 Gender Identity Disorder, Unspecified

Examples include: ❍ Intersex conditions (e.g. partial androgen insensitivity syndrome, congenital adrenal hyperplasia) accompanied by gender dysphoria ❍ Transient, stress-related cross-dressing behaviour ❍ Persistent preoccupation with castration or penectomy without desire to acquire sex characteristics of the other sex

No examples given

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Distress or impairment The fourth criterion states that the ‘disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of functioning’ (APA 2000: 581). As pointed out by Wilson (1998), this kind of clinical significance criterion was added to the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for all Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders, reflecting the APA’s decision to make distress and impairment central to its definition of mental disorder. This focus on distress and impairment was the outcome of the 1970s debates that eventually led to the removal of homosexuality as a mental disorder from the DSM-III-R.33 However, the DSM-IV-TR (APA 2000: 582) still lists ‘[p]ersistent and marked distress about sexual orientation’ as an example of a Sexual Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. This kind of move constitutes a compromise whereby a phenomenon such as homosexuality is no longer in and of itself considered a mental disorder, but distress or impairment as a result of its presence is still classified as a mental disorder. However, the APA’s concession that homosexuality was not inherently pathological does not necessarily extend to its conceptualisation of other sexual and gender identity issues (cf. Wilson 1998). In fact, one gets the distinct impression that the DSM-IV-TR views cross-gender identification and activities as abnormal and a ‘disturbance’34 quite apart from whether or not distress is involved for the person in question.35 These four general criteria were first presented in this way in the DSM-IV (1994), when the previously separate diagnoses for children and adults – ‘Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood’ and ‘Transsexualism’ respectively – were collapsed into the single overarching diagnosis of ‘Gender Identity Disorder’ with different subcriteria sets for children and adolescents/adults respectively (cf. Zucker 2004: 746).36 Unlike the DSM-IV-TR, the ICD-10 does not stipulate general diagnostic criteria applicable across age groups.37 Children It was in 1980 that the DSM-III first contained a diagnostic category called ‘302.60 Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood’ (GIDC), which was also included in the DSM-III-R (1987).38 In the DSM-IV (1994) and DSM-IV-TR (2000) it became ‘302.6 Gender Identity Disorder in Children’.39 The descriptions of GID in children remained largely the same through the different versions. One interesting difference is that the DSM-III and DSM-III-R tended to blame parents – claiming that excessive closeness to one parent and unavailability of the other parent are predisposing factors for GID (cf. APA 1980: 265, 1987: 73). The DSM-IV and DSM-IV-TR omit such claims. The DSM-III and DSM-III-R allowed GID diagnoses for intersexed children. The DSMIII says that: ‘Physical abnormalities of the sex organs are rarely associated with Gender Identity Disorder; when they are present, the physical disorder should be noted on Axis III’ (APA 1980: 265).40 The DSM-IV and DSM-IV-TR, on the other hand, rule them out – as is evident from the third general criterion (Criterion C) mentioned above.

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The story of my life My name is Nombulelo Soldaat. I was born in the Eastern Cape in a small town called Steynsburg. There’s not much I can tell you about the place because me and my family moved when I was still young. All I can say it sounded like a nice place because most of my family were living together but in different houses not far from each other. We moved to Whittlesea in a township called Sada. I was staying with my grandmother, my brother and my cousins. My mother and my dad were always in Namibia. That’s where my father worked and where he still works today. By the time I was ready to start school my grandmother took me and my cousin to register at school. Because we didn’t have much different age, as I was six, she was five. She’s my cousin and also my friend ever since school days. My mother came back from Namibia and she got her own place and me and my brother moved with her to a different location at Ekuphumleni and we had to change school because our previous school was far from where we were staying and also from new friends. I met two boys. My mother was going to the same church with their parents and we became best friends and we were playing soccer and also hanged out with other boys. I was also an athlete since I was young at primary but I never got serious until I started high school and running became one of my hobbies like soccer. I played soccer on the street after school. Sometimes my brother’s team mates would want me to help them when they play with other teams, but my mother would refuse because I was tiny and she was afraid I will get hurt. I only played on the street and it was still fun. Most of the girls would make fun of me that I’m playing with boys but I never cared until I start standard five, then I notice that there’s something different about me, for god’s sake I was a girl playing with boys. But I felt so happy around boys teasing each other, doing all the games boys do. I couldn’t take it anymore as I was so shy around girls when they try to make conversation, it may sound crazy but the only thing girls talked about was boyfriends. By the time I was in standard six, girls were my friends, even though I didn’t fit, to be honest I pretended my whole childhood life to avoid being different from them. I even tried to have a boyfriend because at lunch breaks at school we would sit in groups, talk about guys. You can just imagine the pain I was in. I would also talk so there won’t be question about me. There was this guy at my school who I liked. He was in standard seven. He was good looking, dress nice and also a friend of the well-known guys at school. First he was kind and caring, but he changed and wanted me to have sex with him. As much as he was a charmer I was so tempted, I even went to his friend’s house around about eight o’clock at night. I guess I was lucky because his friend’s grandmother was at home that night and her bedroom door was open. So he took me home. The most important part I forgot when I was still at primary, my mother took me to Cape Town. I was still at standard two. She talked to my teacher. I didn’t hear what they were saying. She only told me she’s taking me to a doctor in Cape Town and I never asked even though I knew I wasn’t sick. I guess I was excited about going. When we arrived in Cape Town we went to Tygerberg hospital and I had to stay there. There was this friendly doctor who always come to check on me. And my mother promised to come and visit every day and she did with her sisters who were staying in Cape and also with their children. The funniest thing is I never asked my mother anything about me being there. But I stayed anyway. The rest of the staff in hospital were nice and would bring me sweets. Something strange, they never only did that, they would ask me to show some new colleague of theirs my lower body. I was embarrassed but I did it because they promised they won’t hurt me. I never understood the language, they were white people. And my mother, I guess, she did try and explain what was about to happen to me. I was still young and I never understood a word. She said everything is going to be fine my baby. I went to surgery in this room full of people with white coats, mask on their face and gloves. And they put a mask on my face. I wake up very cold, I was taken to my room. I could never tell what was going on with my body, but I had pain down my stomach and the nurse will come and check on me.

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I missed that year of my school and my cousin was now in another standard while I went back to the same class. I guess to some parents it’s very difficult to tell your children what is really going on. By the time I was sixteen or seventeen some of my friends started to have periods and it never happened to me. And they also developed breasts and I had to take pills for mine to grow, but they never did. I was so frustrated at school and when I was at home with my friends as they were showing each other how big their breasts are and I would change the subject. Believe me, I don’t want any child to live their life the way I did. I stopped running at school and my teacher thought I was growing up because it was only me and my other friend who were athletes at our group. What make it so hard was because me and my mother never talk about the way I was born and not even a single teacher at my school notice anything different on me. Believe me, I needed someone to talk to who would promise me that everything will be fine. If I miss training I will be punished because I was one of the students my school depended on. Everywhere we go to compete with other schools I will always come first or second on 1 500, that is four rounds. I remember the other day we were competing with other schools in the same region, and everyone who win, like for example, someone who came first, second, or third on the line – those pupils would be one team, so they can compete with other schools from other towns. And I come second, it was Bisho stadium and it was the happiest day of my life to see my name on paper and I was the only one at my school and I was happy. I started to miss classes at school pretending I was sick. My mom was working in Queenstown thirty kilometres from where I was staying. I was staying with my elder brother. After standard eight I came to Cape Town to stay with my uncle and his wife. I did nine and ten, by the time I was doing matric my cousin sister who is a lesbian moved next door our house with some of her friends. They were all lesbians. By that time I was old enough to understand because I could see some resemblance between me and them. For starters, they like soccer and dress in big clothes like shirt and jeans. When I came back from school I would watch them from the window because if I would stand outside and watch them, they would invite me to join them, because I could tell the way they look at me sometimes that they know more about me than I did. The thing is I never thought of myself as being boy or girl, I only like to dress like boys, even though my mother would bought me dress and other stuff girls wear. I guess she wanted me to be a girl even though she knew deep down it was impossible. On my first year out of high school my mother and my brother move to Cape Town to find work. I could see she was very hurt inside, but she was strong, she never show it. She even sit down with me to explain how was I born and why she took me to hospital when I was young. After I finish matric I went to see my doctor at Tygerberg hospital. I was lucky because he was still working there but he was a professor. He was excited to see me and we talked for long. He explain to me how I was born with a male and a female part. I try to ask why they took the male part off and he told me that my male part couldn’t function well, my woman part was the strongest part. This may sound crazy, but one thing for sure, you have to know every part of your body, even if it’s on your bum, so you could understand yourself. I wish my parents and the doctors didn’t cut my body. Believe me, I know it would’ve been hard to grow up with a male and female part, but it is my body, I should’ve been the one who decided which part I want off or I want to keep them both. I don’t blame anyone because what’s done is done and I’m the one who have to live like this. My life is still not complete because I still don’t know which side I belong to, man or woman. I don’t know anything, it’s like I’m in a dark room with locked doors and no way out. I had a brother who passed away two years ago. He never understand my life because he always ask why I get involved with other women and I would tell him that’s where I feel safe and loved because I never had feelings for guys. He would fight with me every chance he got, not because he hated me, because he couldn’t come to terms with my sudden change of life. He would beg me to

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give it a try to get involved with guys and I would refuse. I loved him very much because he was my dad, my friend and my big brother even though we fought, I knew he loved me and I love him too. Eventually he accepted me and wanted me to be happy but I could see that every time he looked at me he was hurt and disappointed. There were times I would think of committing suicide but I guess I was a coward. There’s a saying that everyone has a reason to be on this earth but to me it’s just crazy from my point of view. I just feel like I don’t belong on this world. I just had too much pain inside and no direction in life. When I was young I always had this crazy dream that I would be somebody when I’m finish at school, get married with two kids like my parents and a husband who loved me and my kids live happily on a big house – as I said a dream. Me and my mother are very close. We talk sometimes about my life but I wish I could talk to someone else. Being born bisexual and live in the township, it’s not a walk in the park, more especially when you are not strong to handle things other people say to you. Sometimes I wish people could leave me alone and wish one day I could wake up in a quiet place with trees and birds and not the people. I guess life is a challenge even if you are straight or not. Many people out there live to make other people’s life more difficult. Every time when I’m at home I feel safe and loved but when I leave I become scared of everyone around me as if they see through my clothes. When I go work I travel by train. Many people would look at me. Some would even ask if I’m a girl or boy and I would say I’m a boy, even then I don’t know myself. Some would speak behind my back. When I turn around they would pretend they were not looking at me. Believe me, that’s frustrating and painful knowing everywhere you go people question you about the way you dress and the way you look as if they have nothing to do. © 2005 Nombulelo Soldaat

The ICD-941 (WHO, 1978:41) mentioned – under ‘302.6 Disorders of Psychosexual Identity’ – ‘preadolescents of immature psychosexuality’ whose behaviour is similar to that shown in the ‘sexual deviations’ of transvestism and transsexualism. It noted intermittent or frequent cross-dressing as well as identification with the appearance and behaviour of the opposite sex that is not yet fixed. It considered ‘feminism (sic) in boys’ as the most common form. The ICD-1042 made ‘F64.2 Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood’ an independent diagnostic category in 1992. The ICD-9 does not explicitly include or exclude intersexuality under ‘302.6 Disorders of Psychosexual Identity’ (cf. WHO 1978: 41), nor does the ICD-10 under ‘F64.2 Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood’ (cf. WHO not dated: 168–170, 1993: 163–165). Both the DSM-IV-TR and ICD-10 categories43 include criteria that pathologise the following in a child: ❍ the desire to be or insistence on being ‘the other sex’; ❍ a preoccupation with the stereotypical clothing and activities of ‘the other sex’; and ❍ the repudiation of one’s own anatomical sex or gender role. Both the DSM-IV-TR and the ICD-10 make statements to the effect that GID ‘is not meant to describe a child’s nonconformity to stereotypic sex-role behavior as, for example, in “tomboyishness” in girls or “sissy-ish” behavior in boys’, but ‘represents a profound disturbance of the individual’s sense of identity with regard to maleness or femaleness’ (APA 2000: 580).44 However, the DSM-IV-TR’s criteria for GID (unlike those of the ICD-10)

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actually allow for the diagnosis of a child without the child ‘ever having stated any desire to be, or insistence of being, the other sex’ (Wilson 1998).45 The DSM-IV-TR (APA 2000: 576–577) presents a long list of childhood activities that could expose a child to a GID diagnosis. Many of these activities are typical of heteronormative middle-class households under the spell of US consumer culture and television productions. Boys are considered to manifest cross-gender identification if they have a ‘marked preoccupation with traditionally feminine activities’ such as having Barbie as one of their favourite toys, liking videos of their favourite female characters, drawing pictures of beautiful princesses, having girls as their preferred playmates, avoiding roughand-tumble play and competitive sports, having little interest in cars and trucks, finding their penis and testes disgusting, wishing to have a vagina, and so on. The list of cross-gender activities for girls includes having ‘powerful male figures’ such as Batman and Superman as fantasy heroes, preferring boys as playmates, preferring short hair, being interested in contact sports, having little interest in dolls and feminine dress-up play, asserting that they will grow a penis, not wanting to grow breasts or menstruate, and so on. The ICD-10 has an almost identical list (cf. WHO not dated: 169–170), but omitting references to Barbie and Superman. The ICD-10 also states that the ‘disorder must have been present for at least six months’ (WHO 1993: 164, 165). Boys are ‘held to a much stricter standard of conformity than girls’ (Wilson 1997).46 For example, whereas the mere preference for cross-dressing or simulating female attire is enough to merit diagnosis in the case of boys, girls must insist on wearing only stereotypical masculine clothing for them to meet the diagnostic criterion (cf. APA 2000: 581; WHO 1993: 164). Not only do lists such as the above pathologise a wide range of activities, behaviours and wishes in children, they also promote the idea that it is abnormal to want to change anything characterised as ‘sexual’ in one’s body. And they reinforce as ‘normal’ and ‘normative’ very narrow cultural stereotypes of femininity and masculinity. It would be surprising if there were many children whose activities keep within such restrictive boundaries. Wilson (1997) remarks that references ‘to “stereotypical” clothing, toys and activities of the other sex are imprecise in an American culture where much children’s clothing is unisex and appropriate sex role is the subject of political debate’. Within this context, GID categories can be seen to play a reactive role and to contribute towards producing distress where there should be none. Exactly how culturally relative and biased GID criteria are is clear from what it considers appropriate methods of urination for girls and boys. ‘[Boys who] insist on sitting to urinate’ (APA 2000: 576) or ‘[girls who] refuse to urinate in a sitting position’ (APA 2000: 577; WHO not dated: 170) are candidates for a GID diagnosis. But such a criterion for crossgender identification only makes sense in cultural set-ups where boys generally do stand to urinate and girls sit. It ceases to make any sense in a vast number of households around the world (including in South Africa) and in contexts such as India where the expectation is that everyone sits to urinate. Examples such as these are only one of the more blatantly obvious ways in which the claims to universal applicability by these diagnostic systems lack foundation. According to the DSM-IV-TR, GID ‘can be distinguished from simple nonconformity to stereotypical sex-role behaviour by the extent and pervasiveness of the cross-gender wishes,

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interests, and activities’ (APA 2000: 580).47 But, as Wilson (1997, not numbered) rightly points out, this really means that it is a question of degree – you are free to diverge ‘from social expectation without a diagnostic label, but not too much’. The DSM-IV-TR promotes the idea that enough social censure will rid a child of socially unacceptable cross-gender activities: ‘Typically, children are referred around the time of school entry because of parental concern that what they regarded as a “phase” does not appear to be passing. Most children with Gender Identity Disorder display less overt cross-gender behaviours with time, parental intervention, or response from peers’ (APA 2000: 579–580). The DSM-IV-TR also sees fit to note that by ‘late adolescence or adulthood, about threequarters of boys who had a childhood history of GID report a homosexual or bisexual orientation, but without concurrent Gender Identity Disorder’ (APA 2000: 580). The ICD10 has it that ‘between one-third and two-thirds of boys with gender identity disorder of childhood show a homosexual orientation during and after adolescence’ (WHO not dated: 169). It adds that: ‘Most [girls] give up an exaggerated insistence on male activities and attire as they approach adolescence, but some retain a male identification and go on to show a homosexual orientation’ (WHO not dated: 169–170).48 In this regard, GID has been severely criticised for furthering an anti-homosexual agenda, whereby diagnoses are used in attempts to identify and treat children suspected of being ‘pre-homosexual’ (cf. Dean et al 2000: 117; Wilson 1998).49 GID criteria for children are more detailed and wide-ranging than for adults, reflecting a greater extent of gender policing over children’s behaviour and wishes. In many ways children are more vulnerable to the enforcement of sex and gender dichotomies. (This is similarly evident in medical practices that promote the surgical policing of children’s bodies by pathologising intersexuality.) At the 2003 APA annual meeting symposium, Hill has argued that, more than anything else, GID criteria reflect the distress experienced by parents who cannot come to terms with children who do not easily fit into mainstream society’s gender roles and expectations. To prevent parents from inadvertently creating problems in their children, e stressed the need for approaches that encourage them to accept their children ‘just the way they are’ (as reported in Hausman 2003). It must be noted that that which for the DSM and ICD ‘represents a profound disturbance of the individual’s sense of identity with regard to maleness or femaleness’ (APA 2000: 580; WHO not dated: 168), has represented – and still represents – perfectly healthy forms of self-expression and self-identification for many people around the world. It is only in the light of very narrow biological conceptions of ‘female’ identity and ‘male’ identity that certain anatomical body shapes are considered the norm for a person’s gender identification, or that people are considered mentally ill if they are dissatisfied with certain aspects of their bodies (particularly those society codes as ‘sexual’) and want to change it. By continuously referring to individuals in terms of their ‘anatomic’ or birth-assigned sex and using gendered pronouns that accord with the latter rather than with individuals’ self-identification, the DSM-IV-TR and ICD-10 show that respecting people’s identities is not one of their concerns. For example, by calling a child a ‘girl or female with GID’ when the child identifies as a boy and feels comfortable with being referred to as ‘he’ and ‘him’, is an act of emotional and symbolical violence that strikes at the core of the child’s experience of self. The same is true for adolescents and adults.

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Adolescents Adolescents could be diagnosed in the DSM-III (1980) under ‘302.5x Transsexualism’ or ‘302.85 Atypical Gender Identity Disorder’. In the DSM-III-R (1987) they could be diagnosed under ‘302.50 Transsexualism’ or ‘302.85 Gender Identity Disorder of Adolescence or Adulthood, Nontranssexual Type (GIDAANT)’. In the DSM-IV (1994) and DSM-IV-TR (2000), adolescents are included with adults under the diagnostic category ‘302.85 Gender Identity Disorder in Adolescents and Adults’. However, the DSM-IV-TR also says that the clinical features of adolescents with GID may resemble either those of children or adults, depending on their developmental level, and that the criteria should be applied accordingly. It adds that ‘diagnosis should be reserved for those adolescents who appear quite cross-gender identified in their dress and who engage in behaviours that suggest significant cross-gender identification (e.g., shaving legs in males)’ (APA 2000: 577). It is interesting that ‘shaving legs in males’ is considered a sign of significant crossgender identification. The APA is clearly not aware of the fact that this practice is widely prevalent among cyclists and other athletes. And, once again, this particular example only makes sense in the context of a culture where people do have a lot of body hair and where its management is regarded as an issue. For large segments of the human population shaving one’s legs or underarm hair is of little, if any, relevance. The ICD-9 did not explicitly mention adolescents under either ‘302.3 Transvestism’ or ‘302.5 Transsexualism’. Similarly, the ICD-10 does not specifically mention adolescents under ‘F64.0 Transsexualism’. However, adolescents are explicitly included under ‘F64.1 Dual-role Transvestism’, which is described as ‘GID of Adolescence or Adulthood, Nontranssexual Type’. The ICD-10 rules out the classification of adolescents under ‘F64.2 Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood’, saying that they should rather be classified under ‘F66 Psychological and Behavioural Disorders Associated with Sexual Development and Orientation’ (WHO 1994/2003). The disorders listed under F66 can pertain either to a person’s ‘gender identity’ or ‘sexual orientation’, but it seems as if ‘gender identity’ has merely been inserted as an addon because the focus of the text is on issues of sexual orientation. The first category, ‘F66.0 Sexual Maturation Disorder’ is described as follows:50 The patient suffers from uncertainty about his or her gender identity or sexual orientation, which causes anxiety or depression. Most commonly this occurs in adolescents who are not certain whether they are homosexual, heterosexual or bisexual in orientation, or in individuals who, after a period of apparently stable sexual orientation (often within a longstanding relationship), find that their sexual orientation is changing (WHO 1994/2003). Adolescents (and many other people regardless of age) are often in a state of uncertainty, fluidity and exploration. Why it should be interpreted as a sign of pathology the moment a questioning attitude is extended to issues of gender identity or sexual orientation is unclear.

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Adults The DSM-III (1980) contained ‘302.5x Transsexualism’ as a new diagnosis. The fifth digit was intended for specification whether the person was ‘asexual’, ‘homosexual (same anatomic sex)’, ‘heterosexual (other anatomic sex)’ or ‘unspecified’. Its criteria included a ‘[s]ense of discomfort and inappropriateness about one’s anatomic sex’ and a ‘[w]ish to be rid of one’s own genitals and to live as a member of the other sex’ (APA 1980: 263). It also stipulated that the ‘disturbance’ must have been continuous for at least two years and must not be due to schizophrenia or another mental disorder. Although the DSM-III allowed GID diagnoses for intersexed children, it excluded intersexed adults from a transsexualism diagnosis: In physical intersex the individual may have a disturbance in gender identity. However, the presence of abnormal sexual structures rules out the diagnosis of transsexualism (APA 1980: 263). The DSM-III-R (1987) coded the diagnosis as ‘302.50 Transsexualism’. Its criteria were similar to those of the DSM-III, but it replaced references to ‘genitals’ with ‘primary and secondary sex characteristics’ and references to ‘anatomic sex’ with ‘assigned sex’. It also explicitly added a criterion that the person must have reached puberty. Unlike the DSM-III, the DSM-III-R allowed GID diagnoses for intersexed adolescents/adults: In the rare cases in which physical intersexuality or a genetic abnormality is present, such a condition should be noted on Axis III (APA 1987: 74). The DSM-III said that Transsexualism ‘seems always to develop in the context of a disturbed parent-child relationship’ (APA, 1980:263). The DSM-III-R (APA 1987: 75) toned it down to ‘usually’ and the DSM-IV and DSM-IV-TR omitted the claim altogether. The DSM-III-R made an explicit attempt at pathologising whole social groups in India and Burma: Cross-culturally, the Hijra of India and the corresponding group in Burma may have conditions that, according to this manual, would be diagnosed as male-to-female Transsexualism. The Hijra, however, traditionally undergo castration, not hormonal and surgical feminization (creation of a vagina) (APA 1987: 74). One can only surmise that the reason similar statements were not included under GID in the DSM-IV and DSM-IV-TR is that there must have been (one should hope) some uneasiness around such a ‘cross-cultural’ diagnostic move and at least some realisation of the bias and relativity of the diagnostic categories. After all, how could these categories possibly be sustained if there were any respect for the variations in which the human self can express itself? The DSM-IV and DSM-IV-TR completely removed Transsexualism as diagnostic category and introduced ‘302.85 Gender Identity Disorder in Adolescents and Adults’. One of the reasons offered for this by the DSM-IV Subcommittee on Gender Identity Disorders was the ‘desire to uncouple the clinical diagnosis of gender dysphoria from criteria for approving patients for SRS [sex reassignment surgery]’ (Bradley, quoted in Wilson, 1997). However, as we shall see below, GID diagnoses are still closely linked to approval for SRS. As Wilson (1997, not numbered) observes:

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If gender identity and not sexual orientation is defined as a mental illness for the purpose of legitimizing surgical and hormonal procedures, then two questions emerge: Why was GID expressly uncoupled from SRS approval criteria, and what is the purpose of diagnosing those who live in a cross-gendered role without surgery? Similar to the older versions, the DSM-IV and DSM-IV-TR stipulate that for ‘sexually mature individuals’ the diagnosis should specify whether the person is sexually attracted to males, females, both or neither (APA 1994: 538, 2000: 582). The assumption seems to be that the direction of the sexual orientation can help predict the course for the development of GID, the presence of other mental disorders and the likelihood of satisfaction after SRS. For example, the DSM-IV-TR claims that ‘men [with GID who are] attracted to neither gender are often isolated individuals with schizoid traits’ (APA 2000: 578). This means that absence of sexual desire (asexuality) is framed as a likely sign of pathology. The DSM-IV-TR also correlates ‘[adult males with GID who are] sexually attracted to women’ with being ‘less likely to be satisfied after sex-reassignment surgery’ (APA 2000: 580). So, in short, less mental health and functionality are assumed for people who want SRS in order to live as lesbian or asexual members of society, and greater mental health and satisfaction for those who want SRS in order to live as heterosexual members of society. The DSM-IV-TR also claims that ‘[v]irtually all females with Gender Identity Disorder will receive the same specifier – Sexually Attracted to Females’ and that ‘females [with GID] who are Sexually Attracted to Males’ constitute ‘exceptional cases’ (APA 2000: 578). In my experience there are many people who want SRS in order to live as gay or bisexual men. But because the psychiatric paradigm states that they are rare, they are unlikely to reveal their sexual orientation when questioned because that might jeopardise their chances to obtain SRS. At the time of my own request for surgery I identified as a gay genderqueer guy,51 but I was very aware that revealing this was not likely to get me past South African government hospital screening procedures. I also knew that even when faced with more open-minded private practitioners, I had to carefully choose my words, making sure that at least some of my statements meet the textbook expectations. In all of the above a heteronormative expectation is reinforced on the basis of a binary model of sex as either female or male. The DSM-IV-TR remains blissfully unaware of the fact that there are many people who reject the binary model and who recognise the existence of more kinds and varieties of bodies to be attracted to than the two narrowly defined sexes that receive official recognition, and therefore more ‘sexual’ orientations than heterosexual, gay, bisexual and asexual. The ICD-9 for the first time contained ‘302.5 Trans-sexualism (sic)’ under ‘302. Sexual deviations and disorders’ in the section on ‘Neurotic Disorders, Personality Disorders and Other Nonpsychotic Mental Disorders (300-316)’. Transsexualism was described as: Sexual deviation centred around fixed beliefs that the overt bodily sex is wrong. The resulting behaviour is directed towards either changing the sexual organs by operation, or completely concealing the bodily sex by adopting both the dress and behaviour of the opposite sex (WHO 1978: 41).

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In the ICD-10 the coding was changed to ‘F64.0 Transsexualism’ and it was grouped under ‘F64 Gender Identity Disorders’ in the section on ‘Disorders of Adult Personality and Behaviour (F60-F69)’. The description was changed to: A desire to live and be accepted as a member of the opposite sex, usually accompanied by a sense of discomfort with, or inappropriateness of, one’s anatomic sex and a wish to have hormonal treatment and surgery to make one’s body as congruent as possible with the preferred sex (WHO not dated: 168). A diagnosis of transsexualism (or GID) is generally required before medical practitioners are willing to provide hormones or surgery that alter ‘anatomic sex’ or ‘sexual characteristics’. Because the ICD-10 places the emphasis on the wish to ‘make one’s body as congruent as possible with the preferred sex’, there is no recognition of the fact that people’s comfort zones with their bodies differ. Not everyone wants the same kinds and degree of bodily changes. Some people want to use hormones, but do not desire surgery. Others want some types of surgery, but no hormones. For example, many transsexual men (i.e. female-to-male individuals) want testosterone and mastectomies with chest reconstruction, but do not wish – for a variety of reasons – to have a phalloplasty (creation of a penis), vaginectomy (removal of the vagina) or hysterectomy performed. People’s wishes are also not static, but can change while transitioning. The ICD-10 diagnostic guidelines further state that ‘the transsexual identity should have been present persistently for at least 2 years’ (WHO not dated:168). But why equate the realness of an identity or desire with the length of time it has existed (cf. Spade 2003: 22)? And why have such a criterion for certain types of body modification (such as bilateral mastectomies or penectomies), but not for other types (such as breast enhancements or tummy tucks)? According to the ICD-10 the ‘[transsexual identity] must not be a symptom of another mental disorder, such as schizophrenia’. But how it is to be determined whether one ‘mental disorder’ is the symptom of another is not made clear. Such a criterion is reminiscent of criteria that rule out SRS for sex workers and HIV-positive people. Incidentally, there are people who have happily transitioned despite having had multiple mental disorder labels (including schizophrenia) attached to them. The ICD-10 rules out a transsexualism diagnosis for intersexed persons, saying that the ‘[transsexual identity must not be] associated with any intersex, genetic, or sex chromosome abnormality’ (WHO not dated: 168). The ICD-10 contains a category called ‘F64.1 Dual-role Transvestism’ or ‘GID of Adolescence or Adulthood, Nontranssexual Type’. It is similar to GIDAANT in the DSM-IIIR (see below), but has no direct equivalent in the DSM-IV-TR.52 Dual-role Transvestism is intended to diagnose: The wearing of clothes of the opposite sex for part of the individual’s existence in order to enjoy the temporary experience of membership of the opposite sex, but without any desire for a more permanent sex change or associated surgical reassignment. No sexual excitement accompanies the cross-dressing, which distinguishes the disorder from fetishistic transvestism (WHO not dated: 168). This is another clear instance of the psychiatric policing of gender boundaries and the enforcement of a static unitary identity. Why should a temporary (or even permanent)

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adaptation of one’s dress code aimed at experiencing membership of a particular group be viewed as pathology? People change their dress codes all the time in order to feel they are members of one group or another. Why should gender-related groups be considered any different? And how could the ICD-10 and DSM-IV-TR continue to make sense of diagnoses such as the above when confronted with traditions such as the following (now largely nonexistent due to colonialist suppression in the twentieth century): This ritual stage [six to eight weeks in Oukwanyama and three to four months in north-western Owambo] encompassed gender inversion, where the young women temporarily moved into ‘male’ roles. They assumed the names of great warriors, and were regarded as being possessed by the spirits of their namesakes. Armed with knobkieries, and accompanied by prepubescent girls (omufundifi) they moved freely throughout the country. The oihanangolo were entitled to whatever food they found during their wanderings, and could mock at, and beat every man they encountered. According to oral sources, this included their (future) husbands, who received beatings as well, and were made to dance as ‘women’ before their brides (Becker 2004: 42). Miscellaneous GIDs The DSM and ICD make use of a number of catch-all categories for people who do not seem to fall squarely into their main GID categories. The DSM-III had a diagnosis called ‘302.85 Atypical Gender Identity Disorder’, which it merely described as ‘a residual category for coding disorders in gender identity that are not classifiable as a specific Gender Identity Disorder’ (APA 1980: 266). The DSM-III-R (1987) replaced it with ‘302.85 Gender Identity Disorder Not Otherwise Specified’ for which it listed a few examples. Also added as a new category in the DSM-III-R was ‘302.85 Gender Identity Disorder of Adolescence or Adulthood, Nontranssexual Type’ (GIDAANT). Similar to Transsexualism, GIDAANT was described as ‘persistent or recurrent discomfort and sense of inappropriateness about one’s assigned sex, and persistent or recurrent crossdressing in the role of the other sex, either in fantasy or in actuality, in a person who has reached puberty’ (APA 1987: 76). But it was distinguished from transsexualism in that persistent preoccupation with changing one’s sex characteristics was absent, and from Transvestic Fetishism in that the cross-dressing was not for the purpose of sexual excitement. The DSM-IV and DSM-IV-TR removed GIDAANT, but retained ‘302.6 Gender Identity Disorder Not Otherwise Specified’ (GIDNOS). The examples offered for GIDNOS include ‘[t]ransient, stress-related cross-dressing behaviour’, ‘[p]ersistent preoccupation with castration or penectomy without a desire to acquire the sex characteristics of the other sex’ and ‘[i]ntersex conditions (e.g. partial androgen insensitivity syndrome or congenital hyperplasia) and accompanying gender dysphoria’ (cf. APA 2000: 582). The DSM-IV-TR defines gender dysphoria as ‘persistent discomfort with gender role or identity’ (APA 2000: 575). In other words, it is not intersexuality as such that is considered a GIDNOS, but the combined presence of intersexuality and a ‘gender identity problem’ (cf. APA 2000: 580–581). However, as is evident from the language used in different versions of the DSM, intersexuality is considered abnormal and pathological from a medical point of view. The ICD-9 contained a ‘302.9 Unspecified’ category (without any description) under ‘302 Sexual Deviations and Disorders’ (cf. WHO 1978: 41), but as yet did not have

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any categories that included the phrase ‘gender identity disorder’. The ICD-10 contains ‘F64.8 Other Gender Identity Disorders’ (without description) and ‘F64.9 Gender Identity Disorder, Unspecified’, which is accompanied by the phrase ‘Gender-role disorder NOS’ (cf. WHO not dated: 170). Both the DSM-IV-TR and the ICD-10 attempt to keep ‘sexual disorders’53 and ‘gender identity disorders’ conceptually apart. For example, both try to distinguish between ‘cross-dressing’ accompanied by ‘sexual excitement’54 and ‘cross-dressing’ without ‘sexual excitement’.55 The former is considered a ‘sexual disorder’ and the latter a ‘gender identity disorder’. However, I would contest the possibility of separating the issues in this way. There are many points in the diagnostic categories where the distinction between the so-called ‘sexual’ and ‘gender’-related breaks down. One obvious example is under ‘302.9 Sexual Disorder Not Otherwise Specified’ in the DSM-IV-TR, which lists ‘[m]arked feelings of inadequacy concerning sexual performance or other traits related to self-imposed standards of masculinity or femininity’ (APA 2000: 582). It is, however, beyond the scope of this chapter to fully address the way in which binary notions of ‘sex’, ‘sexuality’ and ‘gender identity’ are at work in the diagnostic categories for ‘sexual disorders’.

Approaches to service delivery In a comparative review of 35 programmes offering health services related to gender transition and cross-dressing, Goldberg (2003) distinguishes between two main approaches, namely a ‘medical/prescriptive approach’ and a ‘harm reduction/client-directed approach’.56 Although programmes generally fall within one of these two approaches, e points out that some programmes combine elements of both. In what follows we take a closer look at each approach. Medical or prescriptive model According to Goldberg (2003: 11), the medical/prescriptive model is generally associated with university or psychiatric hospital facilities that have a gender clinic run by a team of physicians. This model stresses the responsibility of medical practitioners to screen out people who it considers unsuitable for gender transition. Such screening is claimed to be necessary to protect people from having regrets later. Psychological testing is often used to make one of the GID diagnoses in the DSM or ICD and treatment is determined accordingly. Requirements for treatment follow the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association’s (HBIGDA) Standards of Care for Gender Identity Disorders or are even more inflexible. To be allowed to start the use of hormones, the Standards of Care (SOC) require that you be at least 18 years old, know the benefits and risks of hormones, have undergone psychotherapy for at least three months or provide documentation of having lived in the preferred gender for at least three months – what is called the ‘real-life experience’ (RLE) test. In addition, there must have been further consolidation of gender identity during this period, progress in mastering problems leading to improved or continued stable mental health, and you must be considered ‘likely to take hormones in a responsible manner’ (HBIGDA 2001: 10). To be allowed genital surgery, you need to be of the legal age of majority in your nation,

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have been continuously on hormones for 12 months, have had 12 months of ‘successful continuous full time real-life experience’ without periods of return to the original gender, have had ‘regular responsible participation in psychotherapy’ if required by your mental health professional, show demonstrable knowledge of surgical complications, costs, approaches, etc., as well as knowledge of ‘different competent surgeons’. In addition, you need to show demonstrable progress in consolidating your gender identity and in dealing with family, work and interpersonal issues (HBIGDA 2001: 14–15). According to the HBIGDA, SOC adolescents57 may be eligible under certain conditions for fully reversible physical interventions (i.e. puberty-delaying hormones) when pubertal changes begin. Upon reaching 16 adolescents may be eligible for partially reversible interventions (i.e. masculinising or feminising hormone therapy). Irreversible interventions (surgical) require a minimum of 18 years and at least two years of RLE. One’s success at passing the RLE test is assessed according to whether you have been able to maintain employment, functioned as student or community-based volunteer, acquired ‘a (legal) gender-identity-appropriate first name’ and provided documentation from people knowing that you have functioned in the desired gender role (HBIGDA 2001: 13). For hormones or breast surgery you need to submit a letter by one mental health professional who is ‘competent concerning gender identity disorders’ and for genital surgery letters by two mental health professionals. The letter(s) should document your ‘general identifying characteristics’, ‘gender, sexual, and other psychiatric diagnoses’, the type and duration of the psychotherapy or evaluation, confirmation that the eligibility criteria have been met, the rationale for hormone therapy or surgery, the degree to which you have followed the SOC and likelihood of your future compliance, whether the mental health professional is a member of a gender team, and a statement to the effect that the professional will welcome a phone call to verify the letter (HBIGDA 2001: 6). As is evident from the above, the so-called Standards of Care enforce rigid adherence to a binary gender model and assume inherent pathology in any applicant. Departure from the norm is not looked upon approvingly. It is therefore hardly surprising that many trans people do not feel that they can be themselves when faced with having to pass eligibility and readiness criteria: No one at these [trans] groups seems to see therapy as the place where they voice their doubts about their transitions, where they wrestle with the political implications of their changes, where they speak about fears of losing membership in various communities or in their families. No one trusts the doctors as the place to work things out (Spade 2003: 23). I was struck some time ago by a South African talk show in which local trans people and a psychiatrist were interviewed. In a rather smug manner the psychiatrist made fun of trans people, saying they often came to per exhibiting exaggerated mannerisms and misconceived notions of how ‘women’ and ‘men’ really behave. However, often the exaggeration is in the eye of the beholder and has more to do with the fact that one’s own stereotypical expectations of what constitutes a proper congruence between physical appearance and body language are violated. Moreover, subtlety in expression is hardly more likely to convince psychiatrists, doctors and society at large that you are not comfortable with your body. Trans people are in a catch-22 situation – they have to display certain behaviours in order to access treatment, but at the same time they are ridiculed when they comply.

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More often than not, trans people find that they first have to educate therapists about trans issues before the latter can be of any assistance. In a literature search covering texts from the past 40 years, Raj (2002) identified the following forms of transphobia in clinical (predominantly psychiatric) contexts: ❍ a tendency to see gender diverse clients as mental ill, often involving psychiatric diagnoses of personality disorders or psychoses; ❍ maintaining of myths and stereotypes about trans people through expecting that they comply to the former and by producing psychological theories based on methodologically-flawed research; ❍ use of ethically problematic psychological assessments of people who apply to gender identity programmes, for example, the ‘penometer’ (an electrode device connected to the penis to measure erotic responses to visual stimuli such as women’s and men’s clothing); ❍ use of dubious experiments on transsexual clients (who often complied only in order to obtain hormones and/or surgery); ❍ use of psychoanalytic psychotherapy that is counter-therapeutic in terms of the stated goals and well-being of trans people, including the employment of ‘reparative’/ ‘conversion’ and ‘supportive psychopathology’ therapies; ❍ use of similar behaviour-modification therapies on gender diverse youth in attempts to prevent transsexualism or homosexuality; ❍ almost no acknowledgement of the existence of female transvestites; ❍ discrimination against trans people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or polysexual, often excluding them from participation in the gender programme or denying them hormones or sex reassignment surgery (SRS); ❍ a double standard that grants hormone therapy and SRS to lesbian trans women while denying it to gay trans men and/or denial of the latter’s existence; ❍ marginalisation of people who are not employed or full-time students; ❍ exclusion of sex workers on the assumption that this is not legitimate employment; ❍ an all-or-nothing treatment approach that insists on SRS as the final goal for approved applicants, while refusing hormones for non-operative transsexuals and transgenderists; and ❍ ‘gatekeeping’ – refusing recommendations for desired gender reassignment procedures. South African university hospitals that provide gender reassignment treatment fall within the medical/prescriptive approach. According to information obtained from Gender DynamiX (a Cape Town-based organisation serving transgender people), no gender reassignment surgery is currently being performed at Groote Schuur and Tygerberg, but Pretoria Academic Hospital still offers government-subsidised gender reassignment services. Only four to six operations are done per year and there are waiting lists. In order to qualify for hormone and surgical treatment you are expected to undergo monthly sessions over a period of two years with a psychiatrist who follows the HBIGDA guidelines. Complaints I have heard from some applicants to South African gender reassignment programmes over the past decade include: ❍ having no choice but to make use of a particular psychiatrist approved by the programme in question;

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❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍

very high psychiatric consultation fees; rigid expectations about conforming to the gender stereotypes of the gender towards which one wishes to be ‘re-assigned’; being denied treatment because of having been married and/or having had children; being discouraged by a psychiatrist from forming support groups and having contact with other gender reassignment applicants; and long waiting lists.

However, it is only fair to note that there are applicants who fit the criteria and who are happy with and grateful for the help and treatment they obtain – treatment they would otherwise not be able to afford. On the other hand, people often have no choice but to seek out more flexible and openminded private medical practitioners. In the absence of support networks this can prove an ordeal in itself. I know of someone who spent decades since the age of 16 being rejected by 198 doctors and a gender reassignment panel before meeting a private GP and surgeon willing to provide hormones and surgery. The first responses I received when I stated that I wanted to start using testosterone and have bilateral mastectomies performed without having a penis constructed, were equally discouraging. My GP informed me (having my best interests at heart, e believed): ‘We don’t make hybrids. Either you stay as you are, or you go all the way to the other side. You already don’t fit in; how do you think you are going to fit in then?’

“We don’t make hybrids …”

“But supermodels are fine.” © 2005 Nina Gelderblom

© 2005 Nina Gelderblom

And a friend familiar with state hospital criteria for sex reassignment treatment remarked: ‘You won’t pass the screening procedures. You are too atypical a case’, and proceeded to tell me that from pers experience these things never have successful outcomes. For years I laboured under such misperceptions before a rainbow of alternative perceptions reached me through trans and genderqueer Internet mailing lists, validating my own wishes and experiences. Like numerous others, I was eventually fortunate enough to find relief by knocking at the doors of more flexible private practitioners. In this respect, referral by trans friends proved indispensable.

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However, many people cannot afford private treatment at all, and those who can may have to be content with obtaining hormones only (which are often used for the rest of one’s life), as there are few who can afford having surgery performed privately (and even then only some of the surgical procedures). Complete sex reassignment surgery (SRS) often takes place over a number of years and can cost between R65 000 and R100 000, or more if repeated revisions are necessary. Medical aids do not cover SRS. There are also few South African surgeons willing and able to perform all its stages. Client-centred or harm reduction model According to Goldberg (2003: 11), programmes using a harm reduction/client directed approach are often found in community-based organisations who serve people facing multiple barriers to health care access. This approach is based on the kind of harm reduction model that has evolved to ensure non-judgmental healthcare to people using illegal drugs. It often consists of a partnership between trans community groups, physicians and other practitioners. Education and advocacy may be offered over and above medical services. Although some of these programmes may follow the HBIGDA Standards of Care, others recognise the complexity of people’s needs and identities and set guidelines on an individual basis: In this framework, the practitioner’s role is to assist trans people to get the resources they need to make fully informed decisions about gender transition, to employ strategies to reduce the negative consequences of medically unsupervised hormone use, and to promote regular use of health care services (Goldberg 2003: 11). The International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy (ICTLEP) Health Law Standards of Care for Transsexualism (1997) is an example of such a more flexible approach.58 It represents a significant move away from treatment that is determined by the ‘assessment and diagnosis of a medically classifiable disorder’ towards treatment based on informed consent by a person assumed to be ‘mentally competent to make decisions about their care’ (Goldberg 2003: 4). Accordingly the ICTLEP standards start with a list of principles which states, among others, that ‘[t]ranssexualism is an ancient and persistent part of the human experience and is not in itself a medical illness or mental disorder’ but rather ‘a desire to change the expression of one’s gender identity’, and that people ‘have the right to express their gender identity through changes to their physical appearance, including the use of hormones and reconstructive surgery’ (ICTLEP 1997). Unlike the HBIGDA Standards of Care, the ICTLEP guidelines do not require letters of recommendation from mental health professions in order to qualify for hormones or surgery, nor do they require real-life experience or psychotherapy. Some conditions are set, however. The first standard states that: Physicians participating in transsexual health care shall provide hormonal sex reassignment therapy to patients requesting a change in their sexual appearance subject only to: (1) the physician’s reasonable belief that the therapy will not aggravate a patient’s health conditions, (2) the patient’s compliance with periodic blood chemistry checks to ensure a continued healthy condition, and (3) the patient’s signature of an informed consent and waiver of liability form. If the patient is married, the physician

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may not require divorce, but may also require the spouse to sign a waiver of liability form (ICTLEP 1997).59 It is not clear why these conditions are imposed. Often the aggravation of other health conditions may be a risk a person is prepared to pay in return for the benefits and relief brought about through use of hormones. It is also not clear why it is somehow considered necessary that if the transitioning person has a spouse, the latter also has to sign a form of informed consent in support of the process. The ICTLEP standards impose similar conditions for surgery, with the further requirement of one year of hormone use for genital surgery. For female-to-male chest reconstructive surgery, they require ‘the surgeon’s reasonable determination that the surgery will allow the patient to more fully and successfully live as a man’. But, given their flexibility in other respects, these conditions are arbitrary and unnecessarily exclusive. For example, Goldberg (2003: 5) mentions ‘receiving steadily increasing number [sic] of requests for advocacy and peer support from butch women who do not identify as men but still feel chest surgery is desirable for their personal comfort and safety’. These and other people would be excluded on the basis of ICTLEP standards. The ICTLEP guidelines also stipulate that ‘[p]hysicians providing hormonal sex reassignment therapy shall collect and publish on an annual basis the number of hormone prescriptions they have issued, and the number and general nature of any complications and complaints involved’ and that ‘[p]hysicians providing sex reassignment surgery shall collect and publish on an annual basis the number of sex reassignment surgeries they have performed, and the number and general nature of any complications and complaints involved’ (ICTLEP 1997).

Trans(c)ending GID As pointed out by Whittle (2002: 7) ‘transsexual’ is increasingly considered a misnomer by many people with respect to themselves. It is not so much sex or gender reassignment treatment that people undergo, but rather gender confirmation treatment. Similar to the way in which gay and lesbian activists mobilised for the removal of ‘homosexuality’ from the DSM II, trans activists have been mobilising for the removal of GID from the DSM IV.60 Some activists argue that trans people must be seen to have a medical condition, not a psychiatric illness (cf. ICTLEP & NCLR 1996). Others object to any model of diagnosis – whether mental or physical – because it presumes pathology and enables gatekeeping by the medical profession. There is, however, a dilemma in that immediately removing all forms of diagnosis may also mean removing what little subsidised health care there is for trans people who need surgeries or hormones. However, I do think that we need to find other solutions to trans people’s need for affordable access to hormones and surgery rather than to replace one model of pathologisation (mental disorder) with another (physical pathology). As Denny and Roberts (1997: 321) remark, we are witnessing a paradigm shift ‘with the old model, in which persons with transgender or transsexual feelings are viewed as unfortunate victims of a disorder, changing to a model in which it is the society that is seen as pathological’. In this regard, Spade (2003: 22) makes an impassioned call for action:

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My project would be to promote sex reassignment, gender alteration, temporary gender adventure, and the mutilation of gender categories, via surgery, hormones, clothing, political lobbying, civil disobedience, or any other means available. Or expressed in a more visionary and euphoric mode, says Mackenzie (1999: 193): And just as chaos theory in the nineteenth century disrupted reductionistic and mechanistic views of the universe, transgender theory as we near the twenty-first century is shaking up reductionistic and mechanistic ideas of the ‘known’ body we live in. Fixed ideas of gender bipolarism are wavering, forging a revolution on bodies and consciousness that embraces their complexity. From this new vantage the emergence of at least 50 billion galaxies of gender becomes a distinct possibility. I would like to conclude this chapter with a few brief remarks about the emergence of trans and intersexed movements in South Africa. The very existence of these groups in itself constitutes a challenge to notions of GID and to the pathologisation of gender and body diversity. My historical knowledge of transgender and transsexual groups and individuals in South African communities is limited. However, there are currently individuals engaged in writing up their own life stories and collecting those of others, and hopefully a South African trans history, including details about the first local cases of medical transition, will eventually emerge from collective efforts. As has been the case elsewhere in the world, I suspect that much of South African trans history would have to be reclaimed from so-called lesbian and gay archival material. For example, in Defiant Desire: Gay and Lesbian Lives in South Africa (Gevisser & Cameron 1995), Chetty presents extracts from articles in the Golden City Post (1955) and Drum (1956), for which e chooses the title ‘Lesbian Gangster’. However, the articles are replete with statements such as the following that clearly show Williams’s ardent self-identification as a man, and not as a lesbian: From now onwards I was Johnny Williams and this was the end of Gertie. No more dresses, no more lipstick and powder, no more Gertie. My Grandpa was very worried about me. My mother strongly objected, but I told them it was no use. I wanted to be a man, and nothing was going to stop me. So they called the predikant (preacher) to speak to me. He said: ‘Gertie my girl, it’s a sin to play man when you are a woman.’ I said, ‘If it was a sin, then God would have shown me the sick bed.’ … My earnest prayer each night is that God would be merciful to me and change me completely into a man. If it could be done by any operation, I would gladly risk it as no pain could be too severe if it meant the fulfilment of my desire (Chetty 1995a: 131, 133) Similarly, if one delved deeper into the realities behind contributions such as ‘A Drag at Madame Costello’s: Cape Moffie Life and the Popular Press in the 1950s and 1960s’ (Chetty 1995b), much of what you are likely to find would elude the categorisation of ‘gay and lesbian lives’.

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Destabilising whiteness and maleness

© 2005 Lincoln Theo

I was born with both a pink skin and a penis in South Africa, which nominally makes me a white man, in the sense that these are the identities for which I was groomed. Yet I do not feel male, nor do I feel white. I don’t understand what these terms mean in any real sense, or why they should define who I can become. I reject the sense of obligation that I feel tied to my maleness, and the sense of personal guilt for inequalities and wrongs perpetrated by the system created by others who look as I was born to look, yet did so without asking me whether I wanted to be a part of that system, or perform those prescribed roles. At four years old, ever the gregarious Leo, I particularly loved to dive into the clothes in the dress-up box at nursery school. I remember a frisson of liberatory pleasure as I put on a dress and high heels and, carrying a handbag, played with my friends on the swings and jungle-gym. One day I walked into the kitchen at home where my mother was ironing. I started to tell her of my day at school and of the dressing up. She looked down at me, horrified, saying ‘Little boys don’t dress up in little girls’ clothes. What are they teaching you at that school? We’re taking you out of that place!’ Clearer to me is the knot in my stomach, a sense of despair. I feel the flush to my cheeks as I realise I’ve done something wrong, that there is a rule that I don’t know about that I’ve been caught out in, a law that I’ve broken. I cried and apologised and promised I wouldn’t do it again, and berated myself in the way that four-year-olds do for not being normal. And I learned another rule that cannot be broken, to add to the growing list. Today I reject that sense of restriction I felt on what I may legitimately enjoy. I try to undermine my ‘race’ by adopting some of the traditional body modifications of non-Western peoples, such as tattoos, piercings and permanently stretched body parts. And I have had breast implants as part of my internal search for a body that better reflects my emotional identity – a combination of masculine and feminine, as I believe we all are. I acknowledge that my modifications are at least in part an attempt to ‘perform’ my own life in a way that does not conform to the stereotypes of whiteness and maleness, and in a way that allows me some sort of choice over my performance as human being.



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As part of that performance I choose a transgendered, androgynous body which both transgresses boundaries and allows me to mutate, to be ‘other’, and to be creative. I reject the myth of the natural body, preferring the transsexual body, which sits outside of the approved social spaces of family, work and recreation, while I maintain a ‘normal’ life within those parameters. I have chosen breasts to go with my penis, and with them an external representation of my femininity. Finding a surgeon was arduous. I approached a number, and spent much in consulting fees, with little success. I approached the Groote Schuur Hospital plastic surgery department, only to be told in no uncertain terms that I, as a ‘non-transsexual’ patient, would not be able to undergo the operation there. I finally found a surgeon who agreed to perform the procedure, on the basis that it is not irreversible. Throughout the process I was aware, through the tone and content of my conversations with various surgeons, of my disturbing the processes of medical science, especially those of plastic surgery which in many ways derives its sense of self from the norms of beauty current in modern Western society, norms that are not open to subversion. And so I live my life as a human being. It is easier to go about as a white man. That way I don’t have to define and justify myself at every turn, because the world seems to want something to pin me to. But if you ask, you will find that I am a human being, with elements of masculine, elements of feminine, elements of African and elements of European cultural heritage – I don’t have to tie myself down, even if everyone else seems to want to. © 2005 Lincoln Theo

I am aware of a support group, the Phoenix Society, for cross-dressers and male-tofemale (MTF) transsexuals during the 1980s and early 1990s. It was originally based in Cape Town, and then for a while in Johannesburg, but no longer exists. At the time, there were also a few individuals active in raising awareness about trans issues and legislation for changing birth certificates. In this regard the SA Law Commission was trying to deal with issues of marriage as the ‘union of a man and a woman’, inheritance, liability and so on in relation to people who have undergone SRS.61 More recently, in 2003, a group called the Cape Town Transsexual/Transgender Support Group (no longer existing) lobbied strongly in parliament to ensure that legislation dealing with the alteration of birth certificates and ID documents is more flexible and trans friendly. Their inputs have been incorporated in the Alteration of Sex Description and Sex Status Act 49 of 2003.62 As a result, gender reassignment has been defined in a very inclusive way to acknowledge the fact that each individual’s transition is unique and that not every person undergoes the same procedures and processes. This means that genital or other types of surgery are no longer a requirement for an alteration of sex description. However, two letters by medical practitioners (which could include psychologists or psychiatrists) need to be submitted with the application for an alteration of sex description. The Intersex Society of South Africa (ISOSA), which was founded by Gross in the 1990s, also lobbied strongly to ensure that the Act would allow intersexed people to change their legal sex description without having to undergo medical treatment (cf. Gross 2003). However, reports by a medical practitioner and a psychologist or social worker are still required. Although the Act is a huge step forward in alleviating distress for gender and body diverse people, it entrenches the role of the medical professions as gatekeepers and reinforces the pathologisation of people’s bodies and self-identification by requiring them to produce medical reports vouching for who they are. The ultimate aim should be to have

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legislation that does away altogether with the recording of sex descriptions in ID numbers and documents.63 In the meantime, however, it is important that psychologists and psychiatrists familiarise themselves with the current Act so that they would be able to assist people who wish to alter their legal sex description. South African support groups for transsexual and transgender people currently include the Budding Roses64 in Gauteng and T-Junction in Cape Town. Both groups also offer support for partners, family and friends. T-Junction is run by Gender DynamiX,65 a vibrant new organisation that works ‘towards creating a society where everyone is free to choose and express their own gender’. Gender DynamiX is the first South African organisation to actively engage with a wide range of forums and actors – such as the South African Health Association (SASHA), the South African Human Rights Commission, corporate companies, psychiatrists, psychologists and medical practitioners – in order to represent local transgender and transsexual interests, and to provide education and consultation services. National networking between transgender groups and individuals in South Africa is picking up. Local Internet mailing lists, online forums and web sites are also increasing.66 In South Africa, as elsewhere, intersexuality issues have generally been less visible than transgender and transsexual issues, although that is slowly changing. The Intersex Society of South Africa actively raises awareness about intersexed concerns. This includes lobbying statutory bodies such as the South African Human Rights Commission to recognise that the imposition of surgery on intersexed infants is a human rights violation. In agreement with international intersex activists, Gross recommends: [N]o non-consensual genital surgery should be imposed unless is necessary for the preservation of life or physical health, and when non-consensual surgical intervention is necessary it should be restricted to what is needed for the preservation of life and physical health. No irreversible non-consensual genital surgery which will pre-empt future life choices should be performed, unless needed to preserve life or physical health. A best guess at optimal gender or rearing should be made on the basis of investigation of specifics, but it must be realised that even the most judicious best guess could turn out to be wrong. The issue of gender of rearing and the issue of surgery are different ones: rearing as male or as female should not be thought to require non-consensual genital surgery (Gross not dated). Generally, the way things have developed in international activism over the past few decades is an increased articulation of the difference and uniqueness of transgender, transsexual and intersexed issues with respect to each other, as well as with respect to gay, lesbian and bisexual issues. The difference between intersexed people and transsexual people centres around the fact that the bodies of intersexed people are pathologised from birth and medical treatment is often imposed without informed consent, whereas transsexual people often desire access to medical treatment in order to change their bodies, but have difficulty obtaining it. Because of the way in which a confusion of transsexual issues with intersexed issues can cause harm to intersexed people, intersexed activists often point out that issues of intersexuality must not be confused with issues of cross-gender identification. It has become fashionable and clever donor policy for gay and lesbian service organisations the world over to describe themselves as inclusive of the whole LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersexed) community. However, this seldom translates into a real understanding and practical services geared towards the special needs

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of transgender, transsexual and intersexed people. The result, more often than not, is the eventual emergence of independent trans and intersexed organisations. Such a trend can also be seen in South Africa. This does lead to far better and more specialised services for people’s different needs. But one also has to bear in mind that such divisions are far from absolute – there are many people who crisscross and blur all the boundaries between intersexed, transgender, transsexual, bisexual, lesbian, gay, straight and many more labels the mind can conceive of. It is from them that we learn that ultimately the most important thing is that we are all uniquely human. All these developments constitute a good opportunity to learn from gender and body diverse people themselves. Generally the best way to gain an understanding of the lives, experiences, aspirations and problems of people – whoever they are and however they identify – is to give up preconceived ideas about their identities and wishes and to learn from what they have to say themselves.

Conclusion The medical and psychiatric paradigms assumed in the ICD-10, DSM-IV-TR and HBIGDA Standards of Care reinforce each other by imposing the same sex/gender dichotomies, albeit through different means. Whereas medical paradigms are quick to impose non-consensual surgery on a child who does not conform to stereotypical expectations of femaleness or maleness, psychiatric paradigms withhold agency from adolescents and adults who wish to change those features of their bodies that are considered ‘sexual’. Just about every activity, habit, mood, experience and wish that potentially runs contrary to narrow standards of efficient, rational human interaction, heteronormative nuclear families and market-oriented, secularised societies is pathologised in the DSM-IV-TR and in the ICD-10. The ICD-10 furthermore pathologises every bodily form that does not fall within a narrow statistically produced range of presumed ‘normality’. We need to ask ourselves whether the vision of humanity contained in these manuals serves at all to alleviate human suffering, or whether it does not rather help to produce it.

Acknowledgement The writing of this chapter was made possible partly through a generous Doctoral research grant from the University of the Western Cape/VLIR Prestige Scholarship Programme and a Mellon Graduate Scholarship.

Endnotes 1 See the ICD-10’s ‘Chapter IV: Disorders of other endocrine glands (E20-E35)’ and ‘Chapter XVII: Congenital malformations, deformations and chromosomal abnormalities (Q00-Q99)’. 2 See Dreger (1998) and Kessler (1998) on how medical science constructs sex on a binary model and how this leads to the imposition of genital surgery on many infants. Also see the Intersex Society of America (ISNA) website: www.isna.org/. ISNA describes its mission as being ‘devoted to systemic change to end shame, secrecy, and unwanted genital surgeries for people born with an anatomy that someone decided is not standard for male or female’.

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3 A two-part documentary, The Third Sex, screened in November 2003 (as part of the ‘Expressions’ series on SABC 3). Among others, it traced the lives of two South Africans (S. Gross and N. Soldaat) and dealt with pathologisation and the imposition of surgery, as well as general secrecy and lack of awareness around intersexed issues. Gross has been the most prominent South African activist on intersexuality to date. Writings by Gross can be accessed at www.engender.org.za/publications.html. Also see The Natal Witness (2000a, 2000b, 2000c) for an account of Gross’s life. 4 The DSM-IV-TR is a minor revision of the DSM-IV (published in 1994). The publication of the next major revision (DSM-V) is anticipated for 2011 or later. Information about the DSM-IV-TR can be accessed at www.dsmivtr.org/ and about the DSM-V at www.dsm5.org/. 5 For a history of the ICD that traces its antecedents and development over the past three centuries, see WHO (2005b). 6 The ICD-10 can be accessed online at www3.who.int/icd/vol1htm2003/fr-icd.htm. ‘Mental and behavioural disorders’ are dealt with in Chapter V, F00-F99. The ICD-10 is updated annually, but a process is underway for producing an ICD-11 within the next decade. The ICD-11 will only appear after the DSM-V and is likely to be significantly influenced by the latter. 7 Differences notwithstanding, these two classification systems have more in common than sets them apart when seen from a perspective critical of the way in which Western psychiatry conceptualises and approaches ‘mental disorders’. And as far as the conceptualisation of gender identity disorders are concerned, there is little divergence between them. 8 ‘…[T]he patient consults us with particular symptoms that are the source of clinically significant distress or impairment. Confronted with one (or a couple) of specific symptoms, it is our job to cull from the wide universe of DSM-IV-TR conditions those that could possibly account for them. Once we are armed with this initial list of possibilities, our next job is to collect additional information (from personal history, family history, mental status examination, or laboratory investigations) that will allow a winnowing down of the list to a single “most likely” contender, which becomes the initial diagnosis leading to the initial treatment plan’ (First et al 2002). 9 See, for example, Cermele, Daniels & Anderson (2001) on ‘Defining Normal: Constructions of Race and Gender in the DSM-IV Casebook’. It is also interesting to note how the Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders, Second Edition, Revised (CCMD-2-R) was an attempt by Chinese psychiatrists ‘to conform with international classifications [i.e. the ICD-10 and DSM-IV] on the one hand, and to sustain a nosology with Chinese cultural characteristics on the other’ (Lee 1996: 421). 10 One of the six major areas the APA currently pursues in accordance with A Research Agenda for the DSM-V (Kupfer et al 2002) is the development of a pathophysiologically-based diagnostic classification system. Also see Perring (2003) for some of the theories about psychiatric diagnosis likely to influence the DSM-V. 11 See, for example, the APA (2003) response to hunger strikers who challenged the APA to provide scientific evidence for claims that ‘so-called major mental illnesses are “proven biological diseases of the brain”, and that ‘states of emotional distress results from “chemical imbalances” in the brain’ (MindFreedom Support Coalition International 2003). See Double (2004) for a critique of the APA response. 12 See, for example, Bracken & Thomas (2001), Double (2005) and Thomas & Bracken (2004). 13 See, for example, Fanon on ‘Medicine and Colonialism’ in A Dying Colonialism (1959) and Butchart (1997) on ‘The “Bantu Clinic”: A Genealogy of the African Patient as Object and Effect of South African Clinical Medicine, 1930–1990’. 14 See Keller (2001) for an overview of the role of Western colonial psychiatry in India and Africa. See Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961) for early pioneering critiques of colonialist oppression and psychiatry.

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15 The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Group on Culture and Diagnosis was formed in 1991 ‘to advise the DSM-IV Task Force on how to make culture more central to DSM-IV’ (Lewis-Fernández 1996: 133). For accounts by members of the group on their disappointment with the outcomes of the process, see Good (1996) and Lewis-Fernández (1996). 16 Cf. Alarcón et al (2002: 220–221, 287, 288–289). 17 The inclusion of ‘racism’ as a mental disorder in the DSM-V is currently being debated. See, for example, Alarcón et al (2002: 254–257), APA (2000), Bell (2004), Bell (2005) and Neighbors (2005). 18 The DSM-V research agenda makes no secret of its universalist aspirations and the fact that this is largely based on biological reductionism. Its research agenda on basic nomenclature issues, for example, maintains that research will have to follow ‘two general directions: 1) clear delineation of core diagnostic criteria, desirably applicable to all societies, cultures, and countries throughout the world, and 2) recognition of cultural and cross-cultural variants in symptom definition and behavioral and symptomatic manifestations … The cultural perspective accepts the notion that environmental factors act on or activate genetic or neurobiological predispositions’ (Rounsaville et al 2002: 17). 19 See Cromwell (1999), Green (1998) and Whittle (2002: 21–31) for some historical examples. 20 See Roscoe (2000) for a discussion of gender diversity in North American societies, including the impact of European conquest on the former. 21 ‘[D]iscourse on sex … became essential. Toward the beginning of the eighteenth century, there emerged a political, economic, and technical incitement to talk about sex. And not so much in the form of a general theory of sexuality as in the form of analysis, stocktaking, classification, and specification of quantitative or causal studies’ (Foucault 1990: 23–24). 22 The case became known as one of the first descriptions of female inversion in the nineteenth century (Prosser 1998: 140).23 Slightly modified version of a translation by F. Malik. Retrieved from www.well.com/user/aquarius/westphal.htm [26 July 2005]. 24 The category ‘sexual inversion’ apparently entered the English language as a result of a poor translation of the German Konträre Sexualempfindung (cf. Wikholm 1999a). 25 For example, congenital contrary sexual feeling was subdivided into ‘Psychical Hermaphroditism’ (desire for both sexes, but with same-sex desire stronger), ‘Homo-sexual Individuals, or Urnings’ (exclusive desire for the same sex, but without seriously affecting the character and mental personality of the person), ‘Effemination and Viraginity’ (in men and women respectively: the abnormal sexual feeling also affects the psychical personality) and ‘Androgyny and Gynandry’ (in men and women respectively: the psychical, psycho-sexual and physical aspects all approximate those of the opposite sex) (cf. Knauer 2000: 414–416; Whittle 2002: 35). 26 See Kennedy (1997) and Norton (2002) for discussions of Ulrich’s views. 27 That such a separation of sexual orientation from gender is possible is a problematic assumption, to say the least. Both queer theory and transgender studies question the feasibility and emancipatory value of such a conceptual separation. After all, hegemonic gender norms include the expectation that the ‘opposite sex’ is the appropriate sexual-object choice for any particular person. In other words, heteronormativity and expectations around sexual orientation are themselves instances of gender norms which are historically and culturally specific. 28 See Pfäfflin (1997), Prosser (1998: 10, 124, 141, 152, 250 note 14) and Whittle (2002: 20, 36, 37) for more details about the first cases of medical transition. 29 In fact, based on the kind of notion of a continuum of sexual behaviour suggested by the Kinsey Scale, Benjamin designed pers own ‘Sex Orientation Scale’. It consisted of seven types where zero ‘would apply to any person of normal sex and gender orientation for whom ideas of “dressing” or sex change are completely foreign and definitely unpleasant, whether that person is hetero-, bi-, or homosexual’ (Benjamin 1999, chapter 2, not numbered). Types I-VI represent the Pseudo Transvestite, Fetishistic Transvestite, True Transvestite, Transsexual-Nonsurgical, Transsexual -Moderate Intensity and Transsexual-High Intensity respectively.

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30 Cf. Green (1999: 120); Stone (1993, section 4), Whittle (1999: 8). 31 Cf. Bornstein (1994: 62), Califia (1997: 248). 32 The study by Meyer & Reter (1979). It has been discredited for its serious methodological flaws (cf. Denny & Roberts 1997: 321; Fleming et al 1980; Pfäfflin & Junge 1998). 33 See Cooper (2004: 6–7) and Wilson (1998). 34 The DSM-IV-TR text on GID continually speaks of ‘the disturbance’ when discussing cross-gender identification or activities. Criteria C and D also refer to ‘the disturbance’, implying that cross-gender identification or a sense of inappropriateness of one’s gender role by itself already constitutes pathology. 35 In this regard it is interesting to note that the APA modified the criteria of one of its sexual disorders (paedophilia) to ensure that it can be diagnosed even where there is no distress or impairment. See Green (2002: 470) for a critical discussion. 36 For overviews of changes in GID diagnostic categories through different version of the DSM, see Cutter (not dated), Vitale (2005) and Ucker (2004). 37 However, some of the DSM-IV-TR general criteria are impolicit in the ICD-10 diagnostic categories of ‘F64.2 Gender Identiry Disorder of Childhood’ and F64.0 Transsexualism’. 38 The DSM-III listed GIDC and Transsexualism (as well as the miscellaneous GID categories) under ‘Gender Identity Disorders’ in the section ‘Psychosexual Disorders’, and the DSM-III-R listed them under ‘Gender Identity Disorders’ in the section ‘Disorders Usually First Evident in Infancy, Childhood, or Adolescence’. The DSM-III-R also allowed for the diagnosis of crossdressing in children under ‘302.85 Gender Identity Disorder Not Otherwise Specified’ (cf. APA 1987: 77–78). 39 In the DSM-IV and DSM-IV-TR it is listed under ‘Gender Identity Disorders’ in the section ‘Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders’. 40 The DSM-III-R (APA 1987: 73) makes an identical statement, except for replacing ‘Gender Identity Disorder’ with ‘Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood’. Also see Meyer-Bahlburg (1994: 22–23) for a comparison of approaches to GID diagnoses in relation to intersexuality. 41 The ICD-9 was based on the recommendations of the Ninth Revision Conference (1975) and adopted by the World Health Assembly in 1976. Published in 1977–1978 and in effect in 1979 The ICD-9 – or modified versions of it – is still in official use in many countries. To view the latest details of ICD-9 and ICD-10 implementation across the world, see WHO (2005c) website and related links. 42 The three volumes of the ICD-10 were published during 1992 to 1994. In South Africa the Central Statistical Services published a version of the ICD-10 in 1996 for ‘use and guidance of the medical profession in the Republic of South Africa’, particularly in relation to death certificates (cf. CSS 1996: i). General implementation of the ICD-10 in South Africa has entered its early phases during 2005. Accordingly, the use of ICD-10 codes has been made legally mandatory for all medical claims. For most health care providers (including psychologists) this became the case in July 2005 (cf. Matshidze 2005, PsySSA 2005: 10). 43 Diagnostic categories for ‘Chapter V: Mental and Behavioural Disorders’ can be accessed at the ICD-10 online (WHO 1994/2003): www3.who.int/icd/vol1htm2003/fr-icd.htm?gf60.htm. The latter sometimes contains slight differences in formulation from The ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders: Clinical Descriptions and Diagnostic Guidelines (WHO not dated) and it omits the latter’s supportive text. Both of these versions also differ slightly from The ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders: Diagnostic Criteria for Research (WHO 1993). 44 The ICD-10 says that the ‘diagnosis of gender identity disorder in childhood requires a profound disturbance of the normal sense of maleness or femaleness; mere “tomboyishness” in girls or “girlish” behaviour in boys is not sufficient’ (WHO not dated: 168–169). It is interesting that the DSM-IV-TR uses the term ‘sissy-ish’ while the ICD-10 opts for the slightly less pejorative ‘girlish’.

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45 Criterion A in the DSM-IV-TR requires that a child meets four out of five subcriteria, one of which is a ‘repeatedly stated desire to be, or insistence that he or she is, the other sex’ (APA 2000: 581). If such a desire or insistence is absent but the other four are present, the child can still be diagnosed with GID. Elsewhere the DSM-IV-TR says that ‘[boys with GID] may express a wish to be a girl and assert that they will grow up to be a woman’ and ‘[a girl with GID] may assert that she will grow up to be a man’ (APA 2000: 576, 577, my emphasis), but clearly this is not obligatory for diagnosis. 46 Wilson’s articles (1997, 1998) critiqued the DSM-IV, but the same points hold true of the DSM-IV-TR. 47 The ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders. Clinical Descriptions and Diagnostic Guidelines says: ‘These disorders are thought to be relatively uncommon and should not be confused with the much more frequent nonconformity wit [sic] stereotypic sex-role behaviour’ (WHO not dated: 168). 48 Here the ICD-10 lends itself up to an interpretation whereby being lesbian is assumed to imply having a male identification. 49 Zucker (2004: 746) argues that GIDC could not have been intended as a veiled effort to replace ‘homosexuality’ as diagnosis in the DSM-III because ‘Ego-Dystonic Homosexuality’ was still present in the DSM-III and it was only removed from the DSM-III-R in 1987. According to Zucker, if homosexuality was replaced by anything, it was by ‘Sexual Disorders Not Otherwise Specified’ – where distress about sexual orientation is listed – and not by GID. However, pers arguments about the original intentions of DSM workgroup members do not refute claims that GIDC is often used – whether consciously or not – to serve a homophobic agenda. See Hicks (1999: 529–531) concerning the latter. 50 The other two categories described under F66 are ‘F66.1 Egodystonic sexual orientation’ where the ‘gender identity or sexual preference (heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or prepubertal) is not in doubt, but the individual wishes it were different because of associated psychological and behavioural disorders, and may seek treatment in order to change it’ and ‘F66.2 Sexual relationship disorder’ where the ‘gender identity or sexual orientation (heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual) is responsible for difficulties in forming or maintaining a relationship with a sexual partner’ (WHO 1994/2003). 51 At present I do not identify as any sex or gender. 52 For cross-walks between ICD-10 and DSM-IV-TR categories, see Schulte-Markwort et al (2003). They indicate that the ICD-10’s ‘F64.1 Dual-role Transvestism’ has to be coded as the DSM-IV-TR’s ‘302.6 Gender Identity Disorder NOS’. 53 The DSM-IV-TR contains sections for ‘Paraphilias’ and ‘Sexual Dysfunctions’. The ICD-10 contains sections for ‘F65 Disorders of Sexual Preference’ and ‘F66 Psychological and Behavioural Disorders Associated With Sexual Development and Orientation’. 54 See. ‘302.3 Transvestic Fetishism’ in the DSM-IV-TR and ‘F65.1 Fetishistic Transvestism’ in the ICD-10. It is interesting to note that the DSM-IV-TR (unlike the ICD-10) considers only heterosexual males eligible for a Transvestic Fetishism diagnosis (cf. APA 2000: 575). 55 See ‘302.6 Gender Identity Disorder Not Otherwise Specified’ in the DSM-IV-TR and ‘F64.1 Dual-role Transvestism’ in the ICD-10. 56 Goldberg (2003:12) provides a useful table comparing the medical/prescriptive approach with the harm reduction/client-directed approach in terms of their respective attitudes to clientele, crossdressers, who determines the treatment plan, roles of client and practitioner, disciplines of practitioners, focus and tools of treatment, progression and frequency of treatment, purpose of assessment and counselling, real-life experience/cross-living, hormone treatment and approach to surgery. 57 See Downs & Whittle (1998) for a discussion of the issues involved in ‘puberty suppression among adolescents with gender dysphoria’.

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58 See Goldberg (2003: 6–7) for a detailed comparison in table format of the ICTLEP Health Law Standards with the HBIGDA Standards of Care in terms of approach and requirements for hormones and surgery. 59 Such forms of informed consent and waiver of liability are appended to the ICTLEP guidelines. 60 For example, in 1993 transgender demonstrators protested for the first time at a conference of the American Psychiatric Association against the inclusion of transsexuality in the DSM (cf. Stone 1993, note 48). 61 I am indebted to Joy (former Membership Secretary of the Phoenix Society) for information regarding the support group and transgender-related developments during the late twentieth century 62 The Act can be accessed at: www.info.gov.za/gazette/acts/2003/a49-03.pdf 63 In this regard we will do well to remember that in apartheid South Africa ID numbers used to indicate race as well, but that practice has since been discontinued. 64 Its website is: www.buddingroses.50megs.com/ 65 Gender DynamiX has a useful website with local information and resources that can be accessed at: www.genderdynamix.co.za. I am also indebted to Liesl Theron of Gender DynamiX for telephonic interviews and e-mail communications sharing information about local developments regarding trans issues. 66 For example, Gender DynamiX offers an online forum and there also also Yahoo!Groups for South Africans who identify as transgender, transsexual, crossdressers, etc. The South African website Health24.com hosts a Transgender Expert forum: www.health24.com/experts/Sex_ change_guest_expert/979-2605.asp

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T. Shefer

Chapter 16

Becoming a psychologist: Professionalism, feminism, activism Jane Callaghan Introduction The need to produce a more ‘relevant’ psychology for a South African context is an idea that has long been rehearsed in the talk of applied and academic psychologists in this country. However, the reality of the practice of applied psychology in South Africa is that it is overwhelmingly individualist in its form, that it draws largely on western models, and that it serves predominantly the needs of middle class (and typically white) South Africans. Although there are pockets of radicalised practice, and of training in more socially appropriate strategies for intervention (for example, several training programmes in South Africa include a community psychology component, or have a separate course for community psychologists), nonetheless the typical model for psychological work in post-apartheid South Africa remains private practice. To understand the intractability of ‘mainstream’ psychological practice in South Africa, we need to interrogate students’ induction into the profession through their education and training. I am not suggesting that selection and training practices are the only factors involved in the reproduction of conservative forms of psychology. Rather, my argument is that training in psychology involves the construction of professional identity, positioning students to reproduce ‘traditional’ ways of doing psychology. To understand the practice of psychology we need to understand how students become positioned as ‘professional psychologists’. South African psychology has historically been characterised by tensions between ‘conservative’ and ‘progressive’ forces within the discipline. In the 1980s and 1990s, the question of the ‘relevance’ of psychology to the South African context was raised again and again. These questions were typically framed in terms of psychology’s contribution to the liberation struggle, the importance of providing appropriate mental health services to sectors

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of the population who were previously denied such services, and of developing psychologies that could theorise the South African context. In applied psychology, this often translated (and continues to translate) into various ‘community based interventions’. Within the context of political struggle for liberation from apartheid, gender was neglected. Women’s activism was reframed and redirected away from concerns about gender oppression, and towards the broader struggle. Recently writers such as Shefer (2001) and De la Rey (1999) have suggested that South African psychology must start to make sense of and work with South African women’s lives. Despite these calls, such accounts remain unusual and under-resourced. In this chapter, we draw on a series of interviews conducted over a three year period (2001–2003) with women in professional psychological training at South African universities. This research was approached from an assumption that, in order to change the way in which psychology is taught and practised, it is necessary to look very closely at the way in which the training of psychologists takes place. As a lecturer at an historically disadvantaged university (1996–1999) and as a masters student myself (1993–1995) I was acutely aware of the experience of masters training as an uncomfortable, often painful or even brutalising experience for students undergoing professional training. What was clear to me, both as trainee and as trainer, was that psychological training did not necessarily ‘empower’ students with professional status and expert knowledge. This project emerges as an attempt to respond to the sense of loss of self and loss of power, articulated in my own story and in the training stories told to me by students I have worked with in the past. That this experience of pain and loss was more prevalent in accounts of women students, and particularly of black women students, did not seem accidental. I wanted to explore whether student accounts of the training process might yield useful insights into the ways in which professional identities are negotiated in South Africa, and the ways in which particular (often conservative) forms of being a psychologist are reproduced. This is not a straightforward story of disempowerment; rather it is an exploration of the way in which taking up the authority of ‘psychologist’ authorises particular ways of speaking, and distances us from other subject positions. Clinical, counselling, educational and industrial psychology students from four South African universities (three historically white and one historically black) were interviewed. The analysis of this material draws on resources from discursive practice (e.g. Burman et al 1996), informed by feminist and postcolonial theory (e.g. Mama 1995). My analysis is guided by the approach to discourse analysis suggested by Parker (1994, 1992). This method is informed by a Foucauldian understanding of discourse and power, which facilitates an exploration of the ways in which ‘individual’ identities are produced within a web of discursive practices. I seek to explicate some of the ways in which power is performed within training institutions, and the ways in which the identity of ‘the professional psychologist’ is constructed. A politically informed discourse analysis (Burman 1991) is well positioned to allow this kind of analysis, through its attention to the ways in which power relationships are constructed within language. This kind of research has the potential to deconstruct the dichotomous representation of ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ (one form of which might be ‘activism’) as it operates both as commentary on and intervention into social and psychological practice. We explore the ways in which discourses of ‘professionalisation’ and the psychological construction of ‘femininity’ operate to constrain and block activism amongst South African

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women psychology students. Feminist activism in psychology is understood here to mean the maintenance of a connection between psychology and politics, and a commitment to revealing and interrupting the operation of power in psychology (Bolak Baratav 2002) and in the relationship between psychology and the context within which it is practised.

Psychology’s subjects? The idea that psychology does not merely describe the experience of ‘being an individual’ but that it is actively involved in the production and normalisation of ‘the individual subject’ (Henriques et al 1998; Rose 1999) is not a new one. As psychologists we are actively engaged in the production of psychology’s object – the universal, acontextual, apolitical individual. But as psychologists, we are unable to escape our own constructions. As the producers of psychological knowledge, we also constitute ourselves as human subjects, as the depoliticised, rational knower of psychology. While this presents a problem for psychologists in general, we suggest it presents a particular problem for women psychologists and women becoming psychologists. Psychological accounts typically presume that women will be the objects of psychology, the known, not the knower. The portrayal of women in psychological accounts is not flattering: damaged, neurotic, irrational, women are psychology’s patients (e.g. Mama 1995; Tavris 1993; Weisstein 1968). For women to manoeuvre themselves from the position of psychology’s patient to psychologist is a major identity project. It requires that students accept the identity of knower, psychology’s subject, with the expert’s power, knowledge, status, whilst, as women, remaining its object, the damaged, the passive recipient of its scientific knowledge. Postgraduate women students of psychology, in professional training, must submit to the institutional scrutiny of the university and of professional bodies, in order that they might attain the status of psychologist. They are dually exposed to the psychological gaze: as the gendered Other and as the psychologist in training. In becoming psychologists, women students must negotiate a tension between their new position as the knowing subject of psychology, and their developing knowledge of their gendered position in psychology as the ‘Other’.

Gender in South African psychology Gender politics in South Africa has tended to take a backseat to the politics of race and class. Historically, in the face of the overtly oppressive apartheid regime, struggle politics focused on uniting the South African left under an anti-apartheid banner. Gender politics were viewed as potentially divisive, and consequently rendered as secondary to liberation from apartheid (Bennet 2002; Kottler 1996; Kottler & Levett 1997). [Extract One] G: Maybe it’s my own sense of the South African scenario, but other issues are considered more dominant, and are more on the agenda, than issues around gender. Issues around race are certainly receiving a lot more attention, and it’s almost like gender, it’s like a second class citizen. Erm, and so to actually raise issues around that, erm, to find a voice and a space for it is … [(laughs)] It’s just not a reality really. And also, where do you find the space to kind of voice that stuff?

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In extract one, G clearly echoes a concern expressed by other South African feminists that gender has been forgotten in South African society. This positions women in South Africa as disenfranchised – not involved in decision-making, lacking in political power. Women in South African psychology confront three intersecting forms of exclusion: the broader privileging of racial analysis and activism over gender; the way in which women are either pathologised or absent in psychological theory; and the lack of representation for women in psychological organisations. The absence of a section in PsySSA for a consideration of gender demonstrates this quite clearly. Their lack of representation in professional structures and their non-representation/pathologised representation in psychological theory renders women voiceless within psychological theory and practice. Few of the women interviewed identified as feminist. Self-identification as feminist has become increasingly problematised for women globally; many younger women suggest that feminism’s battles have already been won. In South Africa, this is further complicated by the tensions already noted inherent in the prioritising of race politics over gender and class. Students suggested that psychological theories had little to say to the experience of being a South African woman. They noted that gender issues, and particularly theorisation of women’s experiences, were simply not covered in their syllabus at masters level. [Extract Two] JC: OK. Hm. Do you think that the psychological theory you’ve been exposed to at university has addressed your experiences as a woman. X: Um. I haven’t really been taught much about gender issues, so I don’t know. JC: I suppose I’m thinking generally about theory, like cognitive behavioural theory, psychoanalytic theory … those kinds of ideas. X: Not at all. Now that I think about it, they never touch on issues concerned with women.

Students seem surprised at the degree to which gender is simply absent from psychological accounts, as if they had not noticed before that in producing ‘universal’ accounts of human experience, gender is effectively written out of much psychological theorisation. Psychological theory which tends to assume universal human experience, with gender portrayed as merely an independent variable, is so pervasive that students seem largely inured to its operation. Phoenix (1987), in a different context, has described a concept of ‘pathologised presence, normalised absence’: women are absent from general theories of human behaviour and experience, but are present as the ‘abnormal’ or ‘problematic’ focus of the psychological gaze. When women are noticed in psychology, it is typically in the context of reading them as ‘different’, ‘ill’, or causing psychopathology in others (typically their own children). These representations of women in psychological theory and practice position trainees in very complex ways. The theoretical frame that sets them up as ‘expert’ also undermines them as ‘sick’ or positions them as ‘ungendered’. This sets up a strong pressure to dissociate from gendered positions as ‘woman’ and to identify as the objective professional. Students note that, alongside these representations and absences, there is little attempt to understand women’s distress as socially constituted. G clearly articulates the way in which the broad sweep of diagnostic and therapeutic psychological theory excludes a social and gendered analysis.

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[Extract Three] G: As a woman – not even as a woman in psychology, but as a woman, erm, things like sexual harassment ... I mean, how does psychology make sense of that? Because certainly in my training, they might give you broad theories, it might be useful to understand my own experience of it, but in a very broad way they’re not specific to women. … If that makes sense. Any sort of stuff, it’s like ignored. And certainly my experience of psychology, and of masters is that gender is not an issue. … I mean, it’s funny, because at one level, they do talk about it, but at another level, it doesn’t speak to your experience, because it talks about roles and stereotypes and blah blah blah blah blah, but … It’s almost like, hello, you’ve actually got no clue.

The theoretical resources offered in the masters training process are, for G and many other students, unable to account for relatively ordinary (and non-pathological) problematic and unproblematic events in South African women’s lives. In students’ accounts, the re-inscription of gender into psychological theory and practice is represented in terms of a politics of ‘voice’ (see extract one). In a context where gender is considered as relatively unimportant except as a kind of ‘individual difference’, it is difficult to ‘give voice’ to concerns about gender, and to speak as a woman psychologist. As Burns (2000) points out, conceptualising activism in terms of finding a ‘voice’ presumes that women’s voices will be different from the voices of men, and also that there is somehow a single, authentic women’s voice. Wilkinson (1996) argues that this can impose a ‘false homogeneity’ on the diverse and multiple positions from which women might speak. Certainly the voices of women in this series of interviews around professional training are multiple, blurred, and positioned in complex ways in relation to discourses of psychology and of professionalisation. The authority to speak in psychology comes with the acquisition of the status of either professional or academic psychologist. To challenge prevailing practices in psychology is to erode the very platform from which you have acquired the right to speak in the first place. But the voice that is authorised by psychological training is constrained, culturally masculine, politically neutral. Giving voice to women in psychology will not necessarily guarantee that women will speak as activists, or resist hegemonic constructions of women (Capdevila 2000).

Professionalisation and depoliticisation To understand the continuing conservatism of the organisation and practice of psychology in South Africa, we need to understand how training processes depoliticise students, and discourage activism. We argue here that discourses of professionalisation operate overtly to trivialise or marginalise political, critical and community oriented work, and more subtly to construct a professional identity that is apolitical, race-less, classless and de-gendered. Students rarely identify as feminist or activist in their accounts of their training. Only one white woman, G and an Indian woman, P, described themselves as politically minded, as feminist, and as interested in social issues. While it is clear that several other students were invested in the development of a politically and socially relevant psychology, they were loath to describe such activity as political. It is suggested that students dis-identify with

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activist subject positions because of the explicit and implicit censure of such identities in the discourse of professionalisation that is characteristic of psychological practice. G (extract four) suggests that psychology training programmes ‘select out’ people who have strong political (or other) views. [Extract Four] G: But there are certainly certain assumptions that people make about what makes a good therapist. Um, and seemingly having strong religious beliefs [laughs] is not one of them. I: What else ... G: I’d say having a strong anything. Strong beliefs, opinions, call it what the hell you like positions, strong positions on anything. Hello? I: So the professional is like a bland, neutral figure? G: Ja, ja! Not quite a tabula rasa, although they’d probably like to present it as that, as a neutral position. Because, you know, that’s how it gets presented. But if you had strong anything … G: Ja, hello? Got to go! [laughs] I mean, it really does. I know certainly, ja. Even strong political ja, opinion. There are probably some psychologists who might you know. But then [speaks with some irony] they’re just community psychologists, of course they’re gonna be like that. That kind of way of talking about it. They’re not clinical, they’re not dyed in the wool, you know?

Student accounts of professional training are structured around the dichotomous representation of the positions of ‘professional’ and ‘non-professional’ within psychological discourses. The ‘good therapist’ – the professional psychologist – in this extract is an apolitical being, lacking in strong feelings and convictions. In describing trainees as ‘not quite a tabula rasa’ G suggests that they are open (though not entirely so) to the moulding influence of training institutions. This marks student identities out as objects of psychological work – to be shaped by the training process to the needs of the profession. The ‘not quite’ suggests that good therapists have just enough individuality to enable them to lay claim to the position of ‘individual’, but she is clear that strong convictions would be too great an obstacle for the psychological training programme to overcome. Thus professional training does ‘not quite’ produce homogeneous drones, but plasticity of character and lack of strong political and religious conviction mark out the ideal candidate to become ‘the good therapist’. Real psychologists (‘clinical’ psychologists) embody the identity of professional psychologist – being a psychologist defines their identity. Having strong views on political matters is seen as ‘unprofessional’ and inappropriate. Strong views get in the way of the shaping of the professional personality. The construction of the ‘good therapist’ as professional, neutral and detached implies an opposite construction: that of a bad therapist or inappropriate therapist – the non-professional, who is too personal, too political. This polarisation of professional and non-professional within psychology relegates gendered and politicised subject positions to the domain of the personal (the non-professional), thus militating against a substantive engagement with the construct of the professional psychologist as activist. In several interviews students mention that ‘community’ projects offer some space for a more critical voice. However, community psychology has become a peripheralised space to which political and social issues in psychology have been consigned, enabling ‘mainstream’ psychology to continue relatively unaffected by challenges to produce a more relevant and equitable psychological practice for South Africa (Callaghan 2005).

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Community psychology in South Africa is often shorthand for psychological intervention with black people and poor people. G suggests that students with political and social convictions are marked out as ‘community psychologists’ rather than ‘real psychologists’, and that such convictions land you in a professional ghetto, while critical psychology – a potential theoretical enclave for engagement with social and political issues – is expunged from applied psychology training. [Extract Five] P: No, but just to answer that last question, I don’t think psychology is allowing for that kind of change. The way we are being taught now, we’re basically taught by the book and to practise it like everybody else does, and er, when do you break out of that pattern and do things differently? Because that’s what’s needed, is to do things differently. And it’s not letting you do that. It’s just churning out a kind of psychologist that’s out there already, and I’m afraid that’s what I’m going to become too. … For me, it’s because the course is not allowing you to be critical, and not encouraging you to be critical. They make you become just one of the others. [Laughter] NM: By the time you criticise them, they wonder why I’m here if I’m criticising them. But most of the things you find out now, you didn’t know before. It’s not what you expected.

In extract five, the power to authorise what is and is not appropriate practice for the applied psychologist is ascribed here to ‘the course’ and to ‘psychology’. Students position themselves as passive in relation to the forces of ‘psychology’; they cannot take up critical approaches which they are neither taught to use, nor encouraged to explore, in their applied work. Rather than describing a community of psychology practitioners, working with diverse methods and theoretical perspectives, student talk refers to an anonymous, amorphous body – ‘psychology’ – a machine that constrains them, and disables their potential for critical practice. The machine ‘churns them out’ as the manufactured, mass-produced, homogenised psychologist. N suggests that depoliticisation is more direct – she suggests that dissension is actively quashed by agents of psychology. (Again, the use of the impersonal pronoun, ‘they’, suggests a homogenised1 force of ‘psychology’, rather than the actions of particular individuals, e.g. lecturers, supervisors). Students are subject to a ‘double homogenisation’1 – through the production of ‘the professional psychologist’, and the active suppression of dissenting voices. Students constitute their identities as ‘professional psychologists’ in a context where they suggest that critique is actively discouraged, and that the driving institutional force is to transform students into ‘them’ – depoliticised, acontextual, disengaged psychologists. Their discursive positioning as this impersonal, depoliticised subject de-genders and de-radicalises student practice, militating against the emergence of an activist psychology. The discourse of professionalism offers a potent pressure to students to distance themselves from their positions as women, as racialised, as politicised beings, through an implicit threat that such identities are somehow ‘unprofessional’. To acquire the authority to speak as the objective, neutral and homogenised professional subject requires dis-identification with these ‘Other’ positions. So, for example, speaking as a ‘woman psychologist’ is rendered unacceptable through these discursive processes.

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However, the construct of the homogeneous collective identity, The Professional, is itself paradoxical: it explicitly contradicts the accepted wisdom within psychological discourses of what a professional psychologist is. As the expert knower in human relations, the professional psychologist ‘should’ be an objective ‘individual’, embodying qualities of rational agency. In contrast, student accounts suggest that the production of this expert knower decontextualises the individual professional psychologist, in effect producing them as more of the same, the ‘collective individual’ (Callaghan 2005; Stronach et al 2002). Moulding students into the ‘good therapist’ undermines their capacity to be ‘rational agents’. This paradox does reveal a fissure in student accounts. The language used by students to describe their production as psychologists – for example, of being ‘churned out’ by ‘psychology’ – is an expression of the depersonalising and oppressive face of this kind of mass production of a particular, conformist identity. However, there is also a hint of resistance, of heels being dug in, a suggestion that this depoliticised, degendered production is not what they desire. These resistances are most explicitly articulated when students describe the psychologists responsible for their training, and their relationships with other people (see extract six). [Extract Six] P: What I find is I used to talk to my friends a lot more before I started doing – especially masters. Because, er, it depersonalises you a little bit, it says don’t, er, engage your friends in discussions about psychology, and about their problems. Try not to talk to your friends, rather refer them to a psychologist where they can get professional help. I don’t know if I like that too much, because, er, it’s like changing the way I behave, with my friends. Because a lot of people change with psychology. Erm, oh, I don’t know if they’re that type of people anyway, but we look at the kind of psychologists that we have out here now. None of them come across as warm, caring empathic people, that even the theory tells us we’re supposed to be. They’re really hard people, that … you almost can’t get through to. And, they’re supposed to understand you, even in your internship, you would expect that empathic relationship, they would know what you’re going through, you know, they can put themselves in your shoes. But there’s such a distance, erm, and, er, I wonder how these people would be with their patients as well. It’s almost like the distance is too much, you can’t connect with your client, with your patient. N: But I don’t think it’s only around that focusing on our working relationship only. Our social lives, for example, at times we, because of that professional reserve, you don’t know whether, if I go to a disco and I see a client, what do I do? What do I do? … For me, I’d really like to be where people are – even if it’s only going to the beach and all that. I enjoy that. And I don’t want to allow the profession to be limiting where I’m going or what I do.

Flagging the importance of friendship and social life, students juxtapose ‘woman-inrelationship’ against the subject position of professional psychologist. Professional training is represented here through the use of the impersonal pronoun ‘it’, an impersonal, amorphous force, both transforming and threatening. While becoming a professional psychologist may bestow status and authority on the trainee, students do not see the attendant cost as unproblematic. They suggest that the idealised professional psychologist is too detached. They contrast the warmth and connectedness of friendship with a cold, less ‘human’ psychological identity that suggests that friends should be advised to ‘get professional help’. The

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juxtaposition of the caricature of professional reserve and ordinary human relationships ratifies a need for a more connected, socially oriented way of being a psychologist. The construct of the caring psychologist reintroduces a personal space within psychological practice. In highlighting other qualities that the ‘professional psychologist’ should embody, students articulate an alternate ‘feminine’ position (Gilligan & Brown 1992) – one of connection, warmth, empathy. Students mobilise resources from within psychological discourses to resist professionalisation: they use constructs like empathy and care to claim space for a more connected and socially oriented way of doing psychology. The discourse of professionalism in psychology masks the essentially conservative nature of the profession as it is currently practiced, and militates against the development of feminist or activist psychologies. The construct reproduces a dichotomy of personal and professional. Students are required to embody professionalism, and to keep their personal/ political selves separate from their professional role. This enables the continued articulation of other affiliations and positionings alongside the identification of psychologist, but prevents them from seriously challenging the identity of The Professional itself (Callaghan 2005). The introduction of the ‘caring psychologist’ into their talk about becoming a psychologist recentres the personal, the interpersonal, and represents a potential space for the articulation of an activist and political orientation within applied psychology. I am not arguing that the introduction of an ethic of care into student discourse is a radical move; in fact, an uncritical adoption of this orientation would be potentially extremely retrogressive. Rather, I am suggesting that the identity of ‘caring psychologist’ offers the possibility for a re-enlivening of the idea of connectedness, sociality and activism into the work of psychology.

The feminisation of psychology Reflecting a growing global trend, women psychology trainees substantially outnumber men in postgraduate psychology programmes. This shift in the gender make-up of trainees has provoked considerable anxiety both locally and internationally, as a potential threat to the scientific and professional status of the discipline. Some psychology departments in South Africa reserve, or are considering reserving, a place on the masters programme for male candidates. Despite their numerical preponderance in training programmes, women form only a minority of full-time employed or self-employed psychologists. Men continue to predominate in senior academic and professional positions in psychology (Richter & Griesl 1999; Wilson et al 1999). The discipline of psychology remains largely masculinist in its method and its content: 30 years of feminist engagement with psychology has resulted in almost no evidence of feminist thought in psychology’s textbooks and curricula. Textbooks written for a South African context typically have a feminist section, but a gendered analysis is not a sustained feature of these texts (e.g. Hook et al 2004; Seedat et al 2001). Students make sense of the growing numbers of women in the profession with reference to the dominant construction of women as naturalised or socialised carers. Developing further the construction of the ‘caring psychologist’, they suggest that this renders women more suited to the profession. In describing women as more suited to the profession, A (extract seven) exploits the concept of sex difference, using it to validate women’s position in the profession. She uses a kind of ethic of care discourse (Gilligan 1982), locating women as more naturally suited to

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[Extract Seven] A: But I feel that women have the sensitivity and almost the conniving ways about them to kind of go into the psyche of other people, and understand why they’re getting hassled about these sort of labyrinth of the mind issues. And the men who’ve been in psychology, and the clients, or rather who are in psychology, the clients I’ve had who’ve been to them have had an unsuccessful treatment … Well, I’ve had clients who’ve been for a debriefing with a male therapist, another one, marital therapy. Neither of them were successful therapies. And I don’t just say that, because I know clients, they always come to the next psychologist and they say to you it didn’t work. But in this case, it didn’t work. I don’t think the males had the care and the sensitivity to really grasp what was going on. I think in both cases, both males were in the profession for, for financial, for financial reasons, as much as anything else, and so it’s a case of another client, do it and out, another client, do it and out. Whereas I think the female psychologists who are in the profession handle, they don’t make as much money, most of them, males will go to work quickly and make more money, but the females are in it to do a good job. And luckily a lot of them have husbands earning salaries.

emotional work, to caring. However, this extract also quite implicitly highlights the double bind in which the ethic of care places women in psychology. While their apparently caring nature makes them more able to ‘do a good job’ than men, it also renders them unsuited to ‘professional’ status. Men may well be just in it ‘for the money’, but they are also not bound by their ‘caring nature’ to the realms of the emotional, the irrational. Emotionality and irrationality are concepts that render women as the objects of the psychological gaze, not as psychology’s objective expert knowers. This reading of women as ‘natural carers’, uniquely suited to being ‘caring psychologists’ serves several functions. It positions women within the discipline in a way that will not disrupt dominant psychological representations of either women, or of the profession. While the ‘real work’ of professional psychology remains explicitly masculinised, space is made for women within the profession to do caring work that is constructed as being in line with their role in western middle class culture as nurturers. G outlines the tensions such positionings create for women psychologists: Certainly in terms of gender erm I mean the sense that I, that I had is that often the role of therapist is that expectation, certainly of the qualities that they want therapists to have – these are for women. And gneee!! [Angry hand gesture] [laughs] I don’t know if that makes any sense? Sort of ideas of the role of psychologists, that women have, that women are this this and that ... So for me, that sets up a tension, for myself in terms of my being a woman. Because sometimes I don’t want to listen, I don’t want to – whatever it is, and I’m not just all those things, I’m a lot of other things as well. And in terms of being a ‘good’ therapist, those kinds of qualities are expected. And so at some level it reinforces some of those gender things, or expectations The construction of psychologist as emotional labourer intersects with discourses of middle class femininity in particularly problematic ways. The qualities of the ‘good therapist’ replicate representations of women as passive, receptive, listening. As a good woman therapist, G is manoeuvred into a very restricted position through the dual location of therapist and woman, in which she is required to reproduce gendered ways of being. The talk around

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feminisation of the profession locates women as more emotionally engaged and sensitive – both more able to relate to clients, and less able to make objective decisions about them. This locates women quite specifically in the profession as people suited to the day-to-day work of seeing clients, but as unsuited, for example, to work in a more senior position, where a greater degree of independence and objectivity would be required. In terms of the discourse of professionalism – which requires professionals to be assertive, detached and rational agents – this association of women psychologists with emotionality, passivity and dependence strips women of authority and power in relation to the profession. A’s suggestion that psychology is a good job for a woman who is dependent on a husbands’ income (and the associated assumption that she remains responsible for domestic and childcare related concerns) sustains this construct of women naturally adapted, as wives and mothers, to be emotional labourers. Psychology is represented as a part-time option, a good career to pursue while engaging in the more ‘traditional’ pursuits of middleclass womanhood. This representation enables the role of women within psychology to be dismissed: G: One of the things that I got during my training is that this is what women want. They don’t want something that will interfere, they want to be able to raise kids, and do all these other things. And people tend to think that means they don’t take it seriously as a career option. I don’t know. This location as emotional labourers and part-time workers positions women to be dismissed as professionals, and as contributors to the wider projects of professional psychology. They are seen as working away at their own small space, while the larger issues that face psychologists in South Africa remain the enclave of men. Writing about the ‘ethic of care’ in conceptualisations of women in psychology, Segal (1999) says: Feminist rhetoric has been widely accepted (if still the butt of satire) especially insofar as it applauds a gentle type of care-based ethic, the affirmation of a benevolent ‘femininity’, open and sensitive to the needs and vulnerabilities of others. ... The continuing dissemination of just such a ‘feminist’ into ‘femininising’ personal ethos can offer a feminism without an oppositional culture or politics, one which has encouraged some feminists to replace what they now describe as their former ‘hardened’ language of politics, with a ‘cosier’ language of feelings. ... The cosier version of feminism can easily slide into, or at least be used in the service of, a wider culture of blandness and denial: one which collapses political into the personal, the collective into the individual (227). In constituting aspects of psychology (specifically the therapeutic encounter) as suitable for women, students reproduce within the profession the dichotomy of the personal and the political that has been the focus of feminist enquiry and activism for so long, and yet appears so intractable in contemporary society. It creates a role for women within psychology in the ‘cosier’ aspects of the profession, leaving the construction of women by the profession relatively untouched by their presence in it. The ‘caring psychologist’, proposed as an antidote to the detached professional psychologist, is neatly co-opted. ‘Caring’ has been re-read as traditionally feminine, nurturing. The way to appropriately be a woman in psychology is extremely circumscribed.

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Women in psychology have two possible subject positions – professional psychologist, or the feminine carer. The way in which this version of the ethics of care reproduces middleclass, white womanhood is also problematic for Other women in psychology. While the carer psychologist offers some scope for resistance to the detachment of the professional psychologist, it remains a very constrained position, which could also effectively block a theorisation of other ways of doing and being a woman psychologist, particularly being a black or working-class woman in psychology. The ‘cottage industry’ description of married, middle-class women in psychology operates in exclusionary ways to block identification as black women psychologists. Students suggested that attempts to resist aspects of their training were dismissed by the training institutions as evidence of their inability to ‘cope’ (Callaghan 2005) or as evidence of their passive aggressive tendencies. The latter, in particular, is a defence mechanism typically ascribed to women (e.g. Schinka et al 1999). This kind of formulation reframes

[Extract Eight] P: Arrogant. I was labelled passive-aggressive as well. But, you know, there were things, you know, it’s more than, it’s more than just a professional evaluation. It’s about relating to people. And supervisors are supposed, because they are in a position of power, erm you know, tend to look down on you, you know, and not treat you like a full person. Because that’s how I felt. That was what was frustrating me, nothing else. That I wasn’t being treated like how I should be, and how I treat other people, erm, and er, it frustrated me, because I couldn’t do anything about it, because they are people who can determine my future and I had to just go along with it so maybe I was passive aggressive. And erm what did I do? I had to just play along with them. Be nice, you know, be false. You know? SM: [smile] P: … at their silly jokes. Compliment them on their stupid clothing, which I didn’t even like. [laughter] I was told, this is the only way to get through your internship. And the thing is, it worked. NM: It does work. P: It works. SM: And when you look at it, the training’s good, but when it comes to that, that’s where they lose it P: The personality thing SM: Ja, the personality thing. It’s just, it’s just out. P: It’s also this woman-woman thing. Because, U (male intern) and I are together, U and I. We would spend lots of time together, we interacted all the time, we were like inseparable for our first six months. And U would also not interact with them on a social level, but it was fine, because he was male, but because I was female, erm, it was a problem. And I couldn’t understand that, you know, because I generally have a tendency to spend more time with males, than I do with females, that’s just, I think something about me that’s always been the case. And er, also because I didn’t want to interact with them, because I wanted to keep that, that kind of that professional distance, that they were my supervisors, and I didn’t want to mix the two. But for them it was not on, you know. I had major problems with that, until I adjusted myself. JC: Hm, hm. P: But the sad thing there was, it wasn’t a professional thing … JC: I was going to say that … P: It wasn’t that I wasn’t doing my work …

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women’s resistances and expressions of disquiet as personal problem, locating the source of the difficulty within the individual trainee. This pathologising discourse also implicitly locates the difficulties with the gender of the trainee, flagging their position as a woman entering the discipline, and shifting them from the position of professional-in-waiting to the gendered object of the psychological gaze. Extract eight, from P, shows quite clearly how women’s professionalism, and ‘lack’ of it, is explicitly gendered. P narrates her performance of middle-class femininity, in the hospital setting: she describes it as a kind of masquerade that ‘worked’: it is both fictional and functional. She articulates how the relational aspect of being a psychologist is constituted in gendered terms. A discourse of middle-class femininity is deployed in regulatory ways to pressure her towards a particular performance of woman psychologist. P, S and N are all black women (S and N are ‘African’, P is ‘Indian’). While P tells the story here, S and N operate as a chorus, echoing, amplifying certain aspects of her story – clearly it resonates for them too. As I’ve noted elsewhere (Callaghan 2005), an important aspect of these kinds of narratives around professionalisation and of the policing of forms of femininity within professional discourses is that they are presented as performative (Butler, 1990). Apter (1991), in her discussion of femininity as masquerade, suggests that femininity is a disguise, that enables women to position themselves quite powerfully within institutions, without being identified as threats. P suggests that she makes a conscious choice to ‘be nice, you know, be false’. While she performs ‘middle-class feminine psychologist’ for her trainers, she is seizing a powerful position as deceiver, subversive. She plays the game, complies with the demand that she fit in, but within her account lies a sense of powerful subversive potential. In narrating this as performance, P resists the positioning of herself as the object of the regulatory gaze of her training institution, positioning herself as a subject who can negotiate different ways of being a woman psychologist. Woman psychologist then is an identification that can be taken on, and discarded. I think it is important to note that, contrary to P’s articulation here, the performance of femininity is probably far less flexible than it is portrayed, and that it interpellates students in ways that are rarely within the control of the student. I am not suggesting here that students are working with a kind of smorgasbord of performative options, and choosing the one that tastes best for them, however, what this construction does suggest is some flexibility – that they are not entirely straightjacketed into ‘professional’ or ‘feminine’ subject positions. It also highlights the constructed nature both of professional and feminine identities.

Conclusions: possibilities for activism? Kitzinger and Perkins (1993) suggested that the tendency in psychology to individualise and pathologise women’s experience was so endemic and so problematic as to render the position of ‘feminist psychologist’ impossible. Certainly, exploring student accounts of professional training seems to suggest that there is no easy way forward for the production of feminist and activist forms of psychological practice in South Africa. In this chapter, I have explored the ways in which discourses of professionalisation, and of femininity, intersect to discourage the feminist and activist engagement with psychology in South Africa. The construct of the detached professional explicitly severs the connection between psychology and politics by marginalising personal and political identities and

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practices. Feminism offers tools for exploring the deeply politicised nature of the personal. It offers a theoretical orientation that explicitly resists individualist conceptions of the self, and a connection between theory and practice, between knowledge and action. Through training practices, we need to facilitate the exploration of the personal–political nexus, particularly as it manifests in psychological practice with women, with the dispossessed, where discomfort with traditional mainstream psychological practice is often at its height. The feminised construct of the ‘caring psychologist’ offers an alternative identity for women in the profession, providing some scope for the development of a connected, socially engaged professional identity. This identity has become conflated with very traditional, middle-class femininities which undermine the revolutionary potential that the construct of the ‘caring psychologist’ offers, locating women psychologists within a ‘hearth and home’ frame. However the feminised version of the caring psychologist is far from seamless: it is constituted in student talk as a performative, a flexible subject position, rather than a rigid identity. The discursive cracks that open around it offer some foothold from which a theorisation and practice of a more social and political form of caring within psychology could emerge.

Acknowledgements I’d like to thank Erica Burman, Rebecca Lawthom, Jude Clark, and Alexandra Zavos, for their insightful and constructive comments on earlier drafts of this chapter. I’d also like to thank the women who allowed me to interview them, and gave so generously of their time and energy to this project. An earlier version of this chapter appeared in the Annual Review of Critical Psychology.

Endnote 1 Thanks to Alexandra Zavos, who suggested this term.

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Index A APA (American Psychiatric Association) 252-255 absence 56 of intersexuality 263, 264 relation of 68 absent object 70-71 abuse of women 135-150 accommodation attitudes, women and Negroes 88 action research 10 activism and psychology 294-295, 297-298, 305-306 Adams 47 adolescence 122 time of transition 124, 125-130 adolescent (hetero)sexuality 121, 122, 130-133 adolescents , diagnostic criteria, GIDs 265, 272 adulthood and transition 126-128 adults, diagnostic criteria, GIDs 265, 273-276 affirmative action 89 African see black African-Americans and women, comparison 87-88 agency 13, 14 all-giving mother 187-189 Alteration of Sex Description and Sex Status Act 285 anatomical-chronological schema of behaviour 185 anti-essentialism 18 apartheid South Africa adolescence 126 black person under 173 debates on woman abuse 141 men in 166, 167, 173 applied psychologist 299 appropriate practice, applied psychology 299 appropriation 28 assumptions, family 151-153 attitudes 91 attributes, ascribed, women and Negroes 87 attributions 91 authentic experience 25 B Barrett 243 basic human rights 89

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Bastian 257 battered women’s syndrome 136 behaviour derogatory 92 discriminatory 92 group 85-86 men’s, variation in 96 being black 209-202 the phallic signifier 79-80, 81 Benjamin, Harry 259-262 HBGDA 262, 277-281 bias gender 86, 18social cognitions 90-92 Biko 165, 169-175 liberation basics of struggle 173, 176 on culture 173-174 on history 173-174 on politics 176-179 on religion 173-174 biological discourse, (hetero)sexuality 131 bisexuality 103 birth see childbirth birthing bodies 236-239 black being 209-202 critical approach 171 Black Consciousness (BC) 168-174 black men 167, 180 Biko on 175-179 black people and apartheid 173 and homosexuality 108 black women 167, 180 and madness 227 bodies 236 childbirth 238 identities 13 narratives of 13, 16-18 race and gender in South Africa 198, 209-212, 219 suffrage 224 blackness and loss of manhood 176-179 and politics 175

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Index

body as a lived body 247-248 black women 236 female 223-249 mind-, dualism 186 Braverman 183 breast surgery 278 Brockington 186 Butler 242, 243-244 C CSVR (Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation) 30 capacity to act 14 ‘caste-like’ status of women 87-88 castratable objects 51, 53 castration of entry into language 68-70 versions of 81-82 castration complex Freud 48-49, 52-58 Lacan 68-70, 74 celebration of motherhood 191-193 change 20-21, 24 child development discourse, motherhood 184, 187-189 child-headed households 125 childbirth 185, 223, 228, 236-239 black women 238 medical model 237 children, diagnostic criteria, GIDs 264, 266-271 chronological sequencing 21 chocolate-coated divides 214-215 Chodorow 191, 243 Cixous 243 client-centred model, gender reassignment treatment 281-282 clinical psychologists 298 clitoridectomy 225 co-dependency 136-137 co-substantial sexuality and unconscious 48 coercive sex 115-116, 122 Collins 242 community psychology 298 condom use 113-115 configuration 27 conscientisation 172 construction, problems with 46-47 contradiction 200 of identities, young black women 202-219

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347

contrary sexual feeling (Westphal) 256-258 corporeal feminism 241, 244-245 critical psychology 32-35 cross-gender identification 263, 264 cultural demands on women, conflict 205-206 issues, psychiatric diagnosis 254-255 D DSM-III-R 273 DSM-IV-TR 252, 266-277 DSMMD (Diagnostic Statistics Manual of Mental Disorders) 231, 251, 252-255, 262 Daly 33 Danzelot 160 Darwinism, social 224-225 de Beauvoir 245-246, 248 de Saussure 64, 65, 66 debates, identity 13-15 decision-making and violence 137 deconstruction feminisim 242 depoliticisation, South African psychology 297-301 derogatory behaviour 92 desire 80 of mother 70 relations to 81 desiring relations 54 development, gender 103, 117-118 diagnostic criteria, GIDs 263-267 adolescents 265, 272 adults 265, 273-276 children 264, 266-271 miscellaneous 265, 276-277 difference construction of 29-37 relations of 54, 56 differences, language as system of 66 Dillon 259 dimensions of comparison, new 96 Dinnerstein 191 discourse analysis 199, 294 disciplinary power (Foucault) 201-202 practice (Foucault) 151, 158-160 technology 124 discomfort with sex or gender role 263, 264 discrimination against women 85, 88 interpersonal 89, 90-92

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348

The gender of psychology

socio-cultural 89 structural 89-90 women and Negroes 88 discriminatory behaviour 92 laws 89, 140 displaced women, study 29-43 distanciation 26-27, 28 diversity feminism 242 Dixon 152-164 dominant role, husband 156 double self 20-22 standard, sexuality 113, 115 dowry-related violence 135 dual identity construction 146, 147, 148 dualism, mind-body 186 durable identity 24-25 E Eagleton 62, 63, 66 early development 103, 117-118 reproduction 122 economic abuse 135, 145 education and transition 129-130 black women and 206-209 for women 224 embodiment, feminist theory 241, 247-248 emotional abuse 135 empiricism 3 feminist 6-8 epistemic privilege 13, 14 equality and motherhood 189-90 Erikson 4 essentialism 18, 32-35 ethic of care 301-303 European history, gender/body diversity 255-256 event in discourse 22-23 exclusion language and 66-67 relation of 68 experience authentic 25 ideological 25 subjective 14 experiences, women’s 8 expert knowledge, ‘psy’ professions 155, 158, 162 explanation of text 27, 28

01011 Refs+index.indd 348

expressive role, wife 155 externally rooted constraints 19-20 F family functionalist arguments 154 paradigm, text analysis 151-164 nuclear, normality of 151 relationships, interdependence 99 father figure, Freud 54-56 figure, Lacan 62, 67, 73-74 Name-of-the- 76-79 ‘no’ of the 55-56 fecundity 132 female adulthood 137 body 223-249 genital mutilation 89, 135 passivity 128-129, 146, 204 reproduction 185-186, 223-239 sexual identity 132 sexual victimisation 132 sexuality 113-115 feminine Freud 48 subjectivity 49 feminisation of psychology 294, 301-305 feminism 42, 87, 95-99, 200-202 and motherhood 189 and hysteria 227-228 and PND 234-236 and the female body 239-249 and woman abuse 139-141 corporeal 241, 244-245 deconstruction 242 diversity 242 individualist 240 rational 240 second wave 190, 239 sexual difference 242 social difference 242 South African psychology 296, 297 theoretical schools of 242-243 rejection of 98 second wave 190, 239 feminist and patriarchal discourses, conflict 205 approaches to the body 243 conflict 205

3/28/06 7:14:42 AM

Index

–non-feminist dichotomy 97-99 post-structuralist understanding of woman abuse 141-143 research 6-10 research, South Africa 10-11 somatophobia 240 theory of embodiment 241, 247-248 understanding of woman abuse 139-141 fertility 132 forced prostitution 135 formulation of male and female bodies 243-244 Foucault 17, 24, 34, 130-131, 243 anatomo-chronological schema of behaviour 185 disciplinary power 201-202 disciplinary practice 151, 158-160 History of Sexuality 256 normalisation 153 micro-politics of power 201-202 panopticism 202 regime of truth 160 subjugated knowledges 152, 161-163 Fraser 160 Freud 4, 47-58 functionalist arguments, family 154 G GDAANT (Gender Identity Disorder of Adolescence or Adulthood, Nontranssexual Type) 265, 272, 276 GID (gender identity disorder) 251-287 diagnostic criteria 263-277 miscellaneous 265, 276-277 GIDNOS (gender identity disorder not otherwise specified) 265, 276 Gallop 243 Gatens 243 gays 104-112 gender and knowledge 86-87 -based violence 17, 135 bias 86, 180 /body diversity 251-287 development 103, 117-118 feminist research 8 in South African psychology 295-297 inequalities 103, 112 narratives of 12-28 reassignment 258-259, 260-262, 277-282

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349

role, discomfort with 263, 264 vs lived body 248 gendered analysis of woman abuse 135-150 assumptions, adolescent (hetero)sexuality 121-133 division of labour 155 research 3-11 genital mutilation, female 89, 135 surgery 277-278 genocide 90 Giles 94 global theory 41-42 good mother discourse 187-189 therapist 298, 302 Great Lakes Region, displaced women from, project 30-43 Grosz 47, 49, 243, 244-245 group behaviour 85-86 boundaries 93 memberships multiple 98-99 H HBGDA (Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association) 262, 277-281 HIV/Aids 110-112, 115, 116, 117, 120 child-headed households 125 education 133 impact on heterosex 103, 118 stigmatisation 118 Hacker 87-89 Hall 125, 128-129 Harding 41 harm reduction model, gender reassignment treatment 281-181 Hartsock 41, 242 Haug 39 hedging 99 hermaneutics (Ricoeur) 18-28 hermaphrodite 255, 259 heteronormativity 103 heterosex 103, 110, 115-116, 119 heterosexism 104 heterosexuality 103, 110-120 (hetero)sexuality, adolescent 121, 122, 124, 130-133 hierarchical methods 4

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hierarchy, status, security 93 Hirschfield 259 homophobia 1-3, 104, 106 homosexual 258 homosexuality 103, 104-112 and transsexuality 260 legal construction 107 hormonal bodies 228-234 hormones gender reassignment 278 raging 223-239 household wealth and domestic violence 138-139 human rights, basic 89 humanist conceptions of identity 201 discourse, (hetero)sexuality 130 discourse, teenage pregnancy 121 husband-as-parent 148 Hyndman 35 hysteria 185, 223, 225-228 hystericisation of women’s bodies 131 I ICD (International Classification of Disorders) 251, 252-255, 262 ICD-9 (Ninth Revision) 269, 272, 274, 276 ICD-10 (Tenth Revision) 252, 266-277 ICTLEP (International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy) 281-282 identifying relations 54 identity as temporal 20 changing 24-25 construction 12-28 development 4 durable 24-25 testing and rehearsing 168-169 young black women 198-219 women’s 8 ideological experience 25 ideologies of motherhood 183-184 illegitimate child 124 Imaginary, the 61-63 phallus 72-76, 78 imagination 25-26 individual-psychological explanations, woman abuse 136-137 individualism 4 ingroup 92-93 insecurity, status 93

01011 Refs+index.indd 350

institutionalisation 170 of Biko 169-170 instrumental discourse, motherhood 187-189 role, husband 155 interdependence, men and women 99 intergroup relations 85-87 internalisation of responsibility 204 internally rooted constraints 19-20 interpersonal discrimination 89, 90-92 explanations, woman abuse 137 interpellation 201 interpretations of text 5, 27 intersexuality 251, 260-262 adolescents 265, 272 adults 265, 273-276 children 264, 266-271 Irigaray, Luce 243 irreducibility of text 22-23 J justifications for violence 148 K Kinsey 105-106 Kirby 243 Kitzinger 106, 186 knowledge and gender 86-87 male 204 of self 204 situated 29-43 subjugated (Foucault) 152, 161-163, Kohlberg 4, 257-258 Kristeva 242 L Lacan 17, 45, 47, 48, 54, 56, 60-84 Lacanian sign 65 lack castration as 69 different relations to 81-82 experience of 67 politics of 50-52 Lanchester 228 language and construction of reality 142-143 and cultural identity 212-218 and sexual identification 68

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Index

borders of 215-218 human in 60-61 of men and violence 142-148 signifying system of 56, 66-67 Laplanche 51, 53 laws, discriminatory 89, 140 Leader 46, 49, 70, 79, 81 leadership, women’s narratives 12-28 legal construction of homosexuality 107 lesbians 104-112 Liddicoat 108 lived body 247-248 Loedolff 108 Lorde 33 loss of manhood, and blackness 176-179 phallic 51, 69 love and romance 113, 115, 123, 145-147 M MDI (material-discursive-intrapsychic) model 232-234, 247 madness and black women 227 and female body 224-228 major depressive disorder with postpartum onset 185 male adulthood 127 dominance 146 knowledge 204 sex drive discourse, (hetero)sexuality 131-132 sexuality113, 115-116 unemployment and abuse 138 Manganyi 166, 172 manhood, loss of, and blackness 176-179 marginality of women 86 marital conflict and violence 137 marriage, reproduction and motherhood 122, 124 Martin 244 Marx 41-42 masculine Freud 48 identity 149 subjectivity 49 masculinity 165 masquerade, femininity as 305 Maudsley 225 meaning in discourse 22

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351

medical ideology, motherhood 184-186 model, gender reassignment treatment 277-281 medicalisation of the female body 228 memory work 39 men and masculinity 165 psychologies of 166 menopause 228 men’s accounts of violence 147-150 menstruation 228-229 metaphor 22 mind-body dualism 186 minority groups, women as 85-99 Minsky 47, 61, 79 mirror-stage 62 Mitchell 45, 47, 49, 51, 55-58, 61, 243 Mohanty 32, 34, 47 moral decay discourse, (hetero)sexuality 131 development, theories of 4 mother as patient 184-186 as object 184-189 as subject 184 desire of 70, 73-74 natural 189 rational 189 romantic 191-193 self-sacrificing 187-189 mother figure Freud 54-56 Lacan 62, 67 mother tongue 212-218 motherhood 182-197 African society 202, 207 and adulthood 127 and marriage 127 celebration of 191-193 discourses of 184 feminist issue 128 ideologies of 183-184 objectified 184-189 rejection of 189-191 trends in South African research 194-195 mothering bodies 234-236 Mpumlwana 175-176 multiple group memberships 98-99

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identities 202-219 mutuality of orgasm 172 N NEPAD (New Partnership for African Development) 168 Name-of-the-Father 76-79 narcissism 50-52, 61-62 narrative gender 12-28 ontological status 18 research 12, 15 trauma and 21 value in research 15-16 narratives black women 16-18, 198-219 displaced women 30-43 men and violence 147-150 women and violence 143-147 negative social cognitions 90-92 stereotypes, women 95 traits, redefining 95-96 negotiation lack of, sexual relationships 103, 112-115, 119 of gender roles, black women 203 Nicolson 235-236 normalising assumptions 153 normalisation (Foucault) 159 normality of nuclear family 151-164 Nzegwu 165, 179 O objectivity 3, 8 Oedipus complex Freud 54-58 Lacan 54, 67, 70, 72-76 resolution of 75-76 ontogeny 125 ontological status, narrative 18 other, woman as 88 Other, the 29-37 outgroup 92-93 P PMDD (pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder) 185 PMS (pre-menstrual syndrome) 223, 228, 231, 247, 248 PMT (pre-menstrual tension) 229-230, 232-234

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PND (postnatal depression) 228, 234-236, 237, 247, 248 PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) 137, 237, 238 panopticism 202 207 parenting function, black women 207 partial reading 41-43 participatory research 10 ‘passionate research’ 8 paternal metaphor 77-79 pathologies, female body 223-249 patriarchal and feminist discourses, conflict 205 power 201 patriarchy and violence 129-140 penis envy Freud 48-49 Lacan 48 performative discourse 305 perimenopausal years 185 personal investment 20 phallic signifier 75 having or being 79-80, 81 phallus and primary difference 53 as signifier of lack 71-72, 79 ‘being’ the 71, 79-80, 81 Freud 48-54 Imaginary 72-74, 78, 79 Lacan 56, 70-75 Symbolic 72-74, 78, 79 phylogeny 125 physical abuse 135 politics and psychology 165-181 polymorphous nature of sexuality 49 Pontalis 51, 53 popularisation 187 positivism 3 post-apartheid South Africa black women in 198-219 feminist research 10 post-colonial society 30 post-structuralism 200-202 feminist 6-8, 32-35 post-structuralist feminist understanding of woman abuse 141-143 hermaneutic 19 postmodernism, feminist 6-8 postnatal blues 235

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Index

postpartum 223, 228 depression 185, 234-236 psychosis 235 Potgieter 104, 106 poverty and abuse 138 power and resistance, theory of 201 and sexuality, strategies 130-131 and violence 137 as resistance 162-163inequality 103, 112-116 of ‘psy’ professional 159 prefiguration 27 pregnancy 185, 223, 228, 234 prejudice 85, 89-92 prescriptive model, service, gender reassignment treatment 277-281 primary difference, phallus and 53 process of research 8-9 professional psychologist 293-306 professionalism, South African psychology 297-301 Prosser 258 prostitution, forced 135 ‘psy’ professions 151-164 psycho-political recapturing 166-168 psychoanalysis Freud 4, 47 Lacan 56 psychological factor, woman abuse 136-137 psychiatry, Western 243-255 psychologists, women 295 psychology and feminism 200-202 and post-structuralism 200-202 applied 293 community 293 identities and 200 mainstream 20 politics and 165-181 practice of 293 relevance 293 training 293 psychopathic transsexual 259 psychosexuality 47 Q qualitative research 5-6 quantitative research 3

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353

R RLE (real-life experience) 277-278 race and gender, post-apartheid South Africa 198219 and woman abuse 138 rape 135 lesbians 109 virgins 118 rationalisation of status, women and Negroes 88 re-programming homosexuals 105 real psychologists 298 reconceptualisation of self 20 redefining negative traits 95-96 rediscovery 167 reference, human action 22-23 refiguration 27, 28 reflexivity 5, 8, 9, 29-43 self- 9 regime of truth (Foucault) 160 rejection of motherhood 189-191 relevance of psychology 293 representation 29-43 reproduction and psychology 228-239 research bias 5 role of 5-6 sexual 50 types of 3-10 Ricoeur 13, 18-28 romance, love and 113, 115, 123, 145-147 Rose 47 Ruddick 191 S SIT (social identity theory) 92-97 SOC (Standards of Care) sex reassignment 262, 277-281 STIs (sexually transmitted infections)117 sameness 20-22, 24 Saussurean sign 64 scapegoat in family 156-157 Schreiner 224, 227 second wave feminism 190,239 self double 20-22 identity construction 12-28 knowledge 204 reconceptualising 20 self-defeating personality disorder 136, 137

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self-policing 204 self-reflexivity 9 selfhood 21-22, 24 sense, human action 22-23 separation of body and emotion 185-186 service delivery, transsexual and transgender people 252, 277-282 sex reassignment 258-259, 260-262, 277-278 role, discomfort with 263, 264 sexed subject 56, 79 sexism 96 sexual abuse 135 difference 45-58 difference, feminism 242, 243 harassment 97, 135 identity 45-58 identity disorder 251-287 inequality 115-116 inversion 256-258 practices, unsafe 112-115 violence 97, 104 sexuality 104 and the unconscious 48 education programmes 132 Foucault 130 Freud 47-59 Lacan 60-82 polymorphous nature of 49 sexuation 49 sign 63-67 Lacanian 65 Saussurean 64 signifier 63-37 phallic 71-72, 75, 79-80 Silverman 47 single -issue politics 40-41 -parent families 153 situated accounts 41-43 knowledge 29-43 social constructionism 106 constructionism, feminism 243 Darwinism 224-225 difference, feminism 242 law, castration complex as institution of 56-58

01011 Refs+index.indd 354

protest, feminist 96 psychology, crisis 85-87 schema 91 visibility high 87 socio-cultural discrimination 89 explanations, woman abuse 137-139 socio-economic status and abuse 138 South African psychology depoliticisation 297-301 feminism in 296-297 feminist research 10-11 gender in 295-297 marginalised sexualities 104-105 professionalism 297-301 research on homosexuality 105, 106-110 women in 296 Spencer 224-225 Spivak 31, 34, 38 stasis 20-21, 24 stereotypes 91, 95 storytelling 13 strategies feminist 95-98 power and sexuality 130-131 to manage violence 144 structural discrimination 89-90 students’ accounts of own families 161-163 subjectivity 37-41, 67-68, 199 motherhood 189 post-structuralist understanding 201 subjugated knowledge (Foucault) 152, 161-163 submission, female 145, 156 substitution 56 and language 66-67 relation of 68 suffrage movement 224 Symbolic, the 63-65, 67 inadequacy of 68-70 phallus 72-76, 78 systems theory 154 T Tajfel 92, 93-94 teenage pregnancy 121, 124-125 temporal identity 20, 22 testing identities 168, 169 third term, Oedipus complex 57-58, 63 Third World woman 18, 32 threat of women’s demand for equality 96-97

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Index

tokophobia 238-239 traditional psychological research, criticisms 4 women 95-98 trans-historical structure 58 transgender 103, 259 transgressive political praxis 200 transition adolescence, time of 124, 125-130 adulthood 126-128 and education 129-130 and turmoil 128-129, 133 transitional discourse, (hetero)sexuality 130 transparent intellectual, myth of 37-41 transphobia 279 transsexuality 103, 251, 260-262 trauma and narrative 21 truth, post-structuralist notion 201 turmoil and transition 128-129, 133 U UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) 30, 33-37 Ulrichs 258 understanding of text 27, 28 of woman abuse 139-143 unemployment, male, and abuse 138 unsafe sexual practices 112-115, 116, 118 unwed mother, 124 Ussher 232-234 V value-free research 3, 8 value judgements 151 verbal abuse 135 victimisation 136 sexual 132 violence against women 92 dowry-related 135 gender-based 135

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355

justifications for 148 men’s accounts of 147-150 sexual 97, 104, 115-116, 122 strategies to manage 144 women’s accounts of 143-147 violent men 136-137 virgin rape 118 Von Krafft-Ebing 257-258 W WHO (World Health Organisation) 252 wandering womb 185, 229 ‘We blacks’, Steve Biko 165, 168, 171-174, 177 weaved contemporaneous revitalisations 168 Western psychiatry 243-255 Westernisation of black women 214 Westphal 256-258 whiteness, narratives 18 wife-as-child 148 Williams 94 Williams, Patricia J 166 woman abuse 135-150 and African-Americans, comparison 87-88 as minority group 85-99 as object 131-132 as superior 96 black 13, 16-18, deconstruction of 7 displaced, study 29-43 marginality of 86 Third World 18, 32 violence against 92 womb as dangerous 184-185 pathological 223-240 wandering 185, 229 women’s experiences 8 narratives, leadership 12-28 suffrage movement 224

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01011 Refs+index.indd 356

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